Resolution
by Forestwytch
Summary: A new lab tech with a painful past joins the team and makes an impression on them all, but when she is targeted by a monster, can they find her in time? Involves whole team. Mentor/father-figure Mac/OC
1. Chapter 1

Mac studied the brunette in an unseasonably long sleeved top fidgeting in the chair across his desk. When it came to hiring entry level techs in the lab, it was usually more about the person than the résumé – few people had experience before applying for one of these posts. The higher level techs tended to use them as floor sweepers and glass cleaners, those that toughed it out ended up with a good line in their job history to get them a higher level job in another lab. Very few stayed, preferring to take their licks and leave when a better position came up elsewhere.

There was something different about this one however. Her science scores where incredibly high, her written exam scores for English and math were comparable to some of the brightest people he already had, and she had graduated top of her class in forensics, with specialisms in digital forensics and genetic biochemistry. She already had some lab experience from the crime lab in Phoenix. She was definitely qualified for the job available, if anything, she was over-qualified. It was odd therefore, that she was in front of him after such a low level role when she could obviously get something better. He realised he'd been staring at her from the blush rising on her face and she dropped her green eyes almost as soon as he caught her gaze. The action immediately reminded him where he regularly saw that look of fierce hunger for justice combined with historic pain and fear. The man in question had proved time and time again his worth to the lab and it was on that basis that Mac considered taking a chance on this girl. Perhaps she and Adam would work well together? Mac's suspicions about Adam's upbringing were just that – suspicions. Adam had never said anything directly but he rapidly changed the subject whenever anything relating to his childhood was mentioned, and his nervous rambling, frequent self-depreciation and paranoia about his worth to the lab told a story to those that looked for it. Circumstantial evidence was all it amounted to, which was not what Mac liked to rely on. He kept waiting for the younger man to say something about what was obviously still bothering him, but so far, nothing. All he could do was try and be there for him if he needed it, but Adam still seemed nervous of his boss. Maybe the two of them could help each other, a pair of kindred spirits hurt by their past experiences. She was running from something; that much was clear to him.

The girl in the seat opposite had slumped down now, the longer the silence continued, apparently the more convinced she was that this interview had been a waste of time. She looked stunned when Mac cleared his throat and offered her the role.

As soon as he saw it, Mac knew the startled smile on her face was worth the deliberation over his decision. She'd stammered through thanking him about a dozen times before he managed to herd her out of his office and pass her off to Stella for a brief tour. Stella would make sure she ended up in the right place to fill out the forms for the background checks, to set a date for the psych eval and to get her set up on the computers. Mac had a moment's worry about the psych testing but dismissed it – if she wasn't able to pass it, she wasn't capable to work in the lab and that was the end of it. Rules had to be adhered to for the safety of all.

Nine months later, at the end of her probation period, Mac knew he had made the right choice. Hannah Rivers had slotted into the lab with barely a ripple. The expected minor hazing from her fellow junior techs seemed to slide off her without leaving a trace – she simply ignored them and got on with her work without any sign of distress and eventually they gave up. She was a quiet and dedicated worker, who while shy, was starting to open up a little. She didn't socialise with her peers from what he could see and spent much of her time at work. She pulled double shifts and came in on her days off to work though old cold cases and had come up with viable leads on several. The "unsolved" heap on the corner of his desk was slowly diminishing with her hard work. She had made some valuable breakthroughs on the active cases she was assigned to as well. She was making herself noticed, more than just another white coat dashing around the lab. It had been the angle she had suggested on the serial rapist case a month previous that had caught everyone else's attention – she had simply been dropping off another two cold case files for him to look over when she had come out with something in front of the team of CSIs sat in his office talking through what they had so far. The perp had been dubbed the "Ferry rapist" due to his targets all being attacked on their way to or from ferry docks across the city. She had scanned the screen in front of her and piped up.

"You could use a net," she said quietly.

Danny started to laugh but Mac hushed him up with a wave of his hand and nodded for her to continue. He knew she was good and wanted to give her the opportunity to tell them what she meant; to see if she had seen something they hadn't because they'd been looking at it too long.

"You know where he attacks them and he stays out of the cameras. But he must scout the locations to make sure no new cameras have gone up before he picks a victim. If you wrote an algorithm to scan his most likely routes in and out of those places and went back a few days before each attack, you might get a face. Or be able to work his movements backwards to an origin point."

Danny had been the first one to recover and had complimented her. The resulting smile was like the sun escaping cloud cover and dazzled everyone in the room. Adam had flushed furiously and muttered that he should have thought of that already. Hannah had dropped the files she was holding on the table and started to stammer an apology but Mac was having none of it.

"Good. Work with Adam and get started."

Hannah's idea had paid off: it took them a few hours to write and tweak the algorithm but once the details had been plugged into the computer, and examination of the CCTV footage from the streets the results it produced, the rest of the case had fallen together relatively easily. Nobody had forgotten that it was her idea that had lead them in the right direction and the CSIs started paying more attention to the quiet lab tech, trying to befriend her and coax her into their circle of friends. It was slow going, she was incredibly defensive of her personal space. She seemed especially wary of Adam, which made no sense in anyone's mind – he was about as gentle as a man could get and certainly no threat to anybody. She didn't drink, so declined offers for drinks after work and apparently didn't share any hobbies with the team, although that was established more by a process of elimination that anything else: they knew she didn't share Sid's fascination with autopsy history, Danny and Mac's interest in sports, or Adam's obsession with gaming. Lyndsey brought Lucy to meet her once, thinking she would put her at ease but the baby only made Hannah quite obviously uncomfortable. Lyndsey didn't bring Lucy to see her again. Flack seemed particularly unimpressed with the newbie's reticence and seemed to go out of his way to "buck her up" by telling jokes, most of which fell flat. Occasionally she would break out in the winning smile they recognised, usually when she was praised for something. Mac had a dark feeling that she'd had far too little praise in the past. Her psych eval had been quite telling, her intelligence and brilliance had shown through in spades, and she had led the tester through a merry dance of cheerful anecdotes about her time in the English private education system, her move to the US and the fun and games she'd had getting her residency and work permits. She had become an American citizen while studying forensics and she had been chirpy and upbeat about her time in New York and her new job in the lab. The tester had passed her but had added a small handwritten and therefore unofficial post-it note stuck to the bottom of the report where Mac's own signature would go. "Borderline – skilled in avoidance techniques." Mac thought she shared a past similar to Adam's, to a greater or lesser extent but it didn't appear to affect her work and she was slowly opening up to them. He let it lie, thinking she would go to Stella or a fellow tech if she needed to talk to someone.

Time went past and Hannah settled into their lives. She occasionally joined them in a bar, sipping her lemonade and sharing stories of her escapades while at boarding school in England. She would laugh with them but Mac could see she had tired circles under her eyes and still watched everyone, judging their mood, their body language, their tone of voice. Everyone had got used to it by then and consciously went out of their way to avoid startling her – she still flinched if surprised and Mac knew she had a scar on her arm from the last time someone had badly made her jump.


	2. Chapter 2

Hawkes had crept into the DNA lab late at night to double check something that had been bothering him about some results he had run that afternoon. Most people had gone home; there was a couple of night shift techs in ballistics, but it was late enough that even Mac was trying to catch an hour's doze on his office couch. Humming from the corner startled him briefly as Hannah slid into view. With nobody to watch her, she was dancing as she waited for a hit on her DNA results. Humming and singing snatches of lyrics as she knew them, she was restocking the glassware in the lab. He grinned, this was the girl they all wanted to see – bright and happy and apparently without a care in the world. He backed up a step, not wishing to disturb her, knowing his presence would rein in her exuberance. He had crept further into the lab than he had thought however, and his backwards step made him bump into the table, knocking over a clean flask near her elbow and scaring her.

Hannah thought she had been alone, safe and in her element, when a noise spooked her. Her hand spasmed round the thin glass tube she had been holding and it broke in her fist. The sudden pain confused her for a moment. Then she spotted an evidence sample rolling towards the edge of the desk, disturbed from its place by the breaking flask. She slammed her right arm down on the edge of the table to stop it rolling off and grabbed it with her dominant hand to replace it in the holder it had come from. The sharp immediate pain in her forearm dwarfed the minor injury to her hand and she stood up with a large shard of glass embedded in her arm, through her heavy lab coat. She spotted Hawkes and jumped back with a cry of surprise; banging her head on the glass wall of the lab. They both froze for a moment before the glass shard in her arm, loosened by her impact with the wall, dropped to the floor and smashed to smithereens. The noise broke the spell and she flushed, glared venomously at him and scurried out the other door of the lab, keeping her eyes on him as she darted away towards the locker room holding her arm.

Hawkes looked away from his study of the door by which she had left, only to meet Mac's eyes from across the corridor. The two men exchanged a concerned look before Hawkes pulled himself together, grabbed a first aid kit from its shelf in the lab and started to follow her. The venom in her glare had shaken him, having never been on the receiving end of such a look. If looks could kill he'd be laminated across the wall. Mac caught him just at the door to the locker room and indicated he would go in alone first.

Hannah was standing at a sink with her back to the door, which was most unlike her; but the crimson river Mac could see streaming off her hand as she held her arm under the running water told him what he needed to know without asking, as did the bloodied lab coat thrown over the bench behind her. She needed medical attention, possibly stiches and certainly a trip to the ER. He kicked the door shut with his foot, making as much noise as possible as he moved closer to avoid startling her again.

He knew when she had heard him – her shoulders stiffened and she half turned to face him, careful to keep her arm in the flow from the tap.

"I'm fine sir, honest," she said with a bright smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Just an accident, I'm guessing there's a form or something I need to fill in?" She turned her body so his view of her arm was obscured, her message clear. _Leave me alone._

"You need stitches," growled Mac, rapidly running out of patience now that he knew she was seriously hurt. Maybe he should have let Sheldon take a look first, as a doctor he would be a better person to convince her to go to the ER.

"Nope! Just a band aid if there's a kit nearby," she chirped at him over her shoulder.

"Fine!" barked Mac, "maybe a doctor will convince you!" He immediately regretted his sharp tone when she sagged against the sink in defeat. Shaking his head, he opened the door and gestured to Hawkes, who was lurking outside with the med kit, already snapping on a pair of gloves. Mac turned away and left them to it.

Hawkes entered the locker room the same way Mac had done – loudly. As soon as he was close enough, Hannah turned to face him and removed her arm from the cold water. Like a striking snake, suddenly she was on him, pushing him back against the lockers, her uninjured arm against his throat – not enough to hurt but with enough pressure for him to quickly give up on moving. Her knee was also _very_ well placed, if he wanted to walk out of the locker room upright, it was by doing what she wanted. He dropped the first aid kit on the floor and kept very still.

"On your honour; on your _Oath,_ doctor, you will **never** speak of what you see here," she hissed into his ear. The look in her eyes and her vehemence shocked him into agreeing before he had completely thought all the implications through, but his quick acquiescence seemed to calm something within her. She turned away from him as if nothing had happened and sat on the bench, arm held out in front of her; apparently waiting for him.

He knelt in front of her, running through a few basic first aid questions first, checking she wasn't dizzy, or allergic to a range of things; taking his time despite his concern. It was more important that she cooperated. She relaxed slowly, answering as fully as she could, but when Hawkes ran out of questions she tensed again as his hands gently touched hers, turning over her right hand so her wounded palm was in view. She had done most of the work, only a few tiny slivers of glass remained in the wound, and Hawkes was happy to bandage it up from supplies in the kit. She watched him work, apparently fascinated as he tweezed out the tiny shards of glass, sterilised the wound and wrapped it in a dressing. She smiled briefly when he pointed out that she was lucky to be a left-hander, there was no way she'd be able to hold a pen with the bandages on her right. However, once he started rolling up her sleeve to look at the more serious injury to her arm, she clenched her jaw and turned her head away – apparently finding the pattern of smudge marks on the lockers opposite incredibly fascinating.

Hawkes had noticed she always wore long sleeves under her lab coat, even in July. Despite the air con in the lab, it was still warm; the mercury had topped 75F in the shade again that day. He rolled up her sodden sleeve, mostly pink now rather than red after its thorough dousing in running water. His sharp look at her face when he looked at her arm was ignored or maybe not even noticed as she stared at the wall. He probed carefully at the scarred arm, noting a multitude of welts probably made by a blunt instrument of some sort, thin lines probably made by a knife and circular marks that looked like old cigarette burns. The desperation he had seen when she asked for his silence made sense now. The latest cut was a relatively deep one, and Mac had been right – she did need stitches, which the kit he had wasn't supplied for. She would need to go to the ER to get proper medical help. He wrapped the still bleeding wound as best he could and tugged down her sleeve to cover the rest of the scars on her arm. That earned him another brief flash of a smile, which heartened him. He knew now, and now he could support her…except he couldn't tell anyone. The scale of the promise she had extracted from him finally became clear and when he looked back at her face, there was a lingering air of gentle amusement that it had taken him so long to work that out.

"Now what?" he asked, perhaps a bit more gruffly than he meant to, expecting her to shrink back from him. When she didn't he continued, "you need stitches and you need someone to look at the bump on your head."

"No hospitals," was the flat reply. This point was apparently non-negotiable.

"Ok. Not a fan of hospitals. That's quite common." He thought for a moment. "Do you trust me?" asked Hawkes, a plan forming. He was unprepared for the flare of suspicion on her face at his words. He froze, keeping very still and both hands in her view. He had some experience with abused kids during his time as an MD and figured that even though she was an adult, it was important for her to be able to see both his hands, and that sudden movements were a bad idea. He extended one hand slowly and explained his idea.

"We can go to the morgue. There are proper supplies there I can use to stitch your arm, if you won't go to a hospital, that's my offer. Or I go out there, tell Mac what I've seen and watch you get driven away in an ambulance."

Hannah stared at him for what felt like a long time, long enough that he was starting to worry that Mac was going to barge in and try to hurry them up. Then, wonder of wonders, she slowly, carefully took his hand and stood up, albeit a little shakily. Carefully Hawkes put his arm around her shoulder and guided her out of the locker room and towards the lift. He could see Mac watching them from his office and caught his eye while waiting for the lift doors to close. He gave his boss a minute shake of the head. _Don't follow us. I got this._ After a moment, Mac inclined his head in an equally minute nod with a raised eyebrow: _Fine._ O _n your head be it._ The doors slipped closed.

Once in the morgue and away from possible exposure, Hannah relaxed. There was nobody here (and no bodies either she sniggered) at this time of night, in the lull between "late night" and "early morning". They could both hear Sid humming off key in his office down the hall and a janitor wandering the corridor with a mop, his radio tuned to a jazz station. She settled herself on an autopsy table and watched him bustle around the room, selecting items and bringing them back to the table she sat on. It was a simple process in the end, much to Hawkes' relief – once it was clean he could see that while the cut was deep, no major blood vessels had been damaged and it would heal without complication provided she followed his directions.

"It'll scar, you know that don't you?" he asked as he tied the last suture. Her snort of laughter was his only response. In retrospect, he realised that may have been a little tactless and tried to backpedal.

"I didn't mean, that is…ah what I meant was…" he trailed off under her withering glare. She shoved his hands away abruptly and hopped down from the autopsy table, fixing him with a look worthy of royalty.

"Don't you _dare_ pity me!" she spat, "I'm _alive_ ; I survived. _Nothing_ else matters, do you understand me? _Nothing_."

With that, she swept off down the corridor towards the lift as if she owned the place, leaving Hawkes more than a little confused about her mercurial moods. Obviously his tactless remark had been taken in humour but his attempt to apologise for what he thought had been insensitive had hit a nerve. But if she could be able to stalk around the place with that level of confidence all the time, then she would be a formidable CSI in the future. Sighing when he realised there was nothing he could do about it, he tidied up after himself and followed her back to the lifts and back up to the lab.

By the time he reached the lab, Hannah was already in Mac's office with the accident book, a giant ungainly thing that probably caused more accidents than it recorded – everyone knocked over _something_ while trying to write in the damn thing and it was a wonder anyone bothered to fill it in given how awkward it was. But rules were there to be adhered to, as Mac liked to say. Hawkes walked on, back into the DNA lab to re-examine the DNA results he had been planning to look at before everything had gone wrong. There were more people around now, the lab coming to life: stitching her arm had taken longer than he had anticipated.

Mac watched Sheldon duck back into the DNA lab. Turning his attention to the young woman in front of him struggling with the accident book, he smothered a chuckle as his desk phone was knocked to the floor by a rogue corner of the book as she turned it round. With a muttered curse she set down the book, picked up his phone and set it back on his desk with a muttered, "sorry boss," and promptly knocked over his pen tidy as she picked up the book again.

"Ah, stupid thing! It's not made for left handers!" she growled, finishing her report into the accident with a final stab of her pen. She retrieved his pen tidy and the pens from the floor and set them back on his desk with another muttered, "sorry boss," and then sat waiting for him to speak.

Deciding he would try and ask her about her reactions and what had caused them, rather than the actual incident, Mac fixed her with a compassionate gaze.

"Hannah, what happened?" he asked gently, not quite sure how to start such a conversation.

"It's all there sir. I broke a test tube, and then when the flask broke I…"

"No. I meant, what happened?" Mac interrupted a nearly word perfect recital of what she had written, albeit awkwardly, in the accident book.

Hannah looked into his brilliant blue eyes and wondered if maybe she had misjudged him a little. He was stern and uncompromising on the rules but there was kindness in his face as he watched her. He was scrupulously fair and had a strong sense of honour. Maybe this time she _could_ trust someone. He could see her thinking, deciding, and wondered if this was going to be the moment she trusted someone. He waited. It had taken a long time to get her to this point and he wasn't about to let the opportunity pass by trying to rush her.

"I…"

Stella burst open the door with news of a new case just as Hannah started to say something. Mentally cursing his ill luck, Mac clenched his jaw so hard against the frustrated hiss that wanted to escape that he had a headache for hours. Not willing to let either woman see the anger and frustration in his eyes he glared at his desk for a moment as if it had personally offended him; before wrestling himself under control again. He looked at Stella, who seemed to have realised she had barged in on something important. She retreated outside but hovered near his office door impatiently. Hannah had clammed up again, Mac recognised the look by now and knew the moment, if it had been there, was now lost.

"Hannah," he said, waiting for her eyes to meet his before he continued. "Thank you." _For_ _nearly_ _trusting me._

Hannah smiled wistfully, as if she also knew the chance had gone, and excused herself back to her lab.

Mac followed her out, putting on his coat as Stella briefed him on what they already knew about the new case. He listened with half an ear, still pondering the lab tech. She had almost trusted him. Stella hadn't been able to get anywhere with her, her vivacious and confident personality seemed to intimidate the young woman rather than engender friendship and trust. She had no close friends among her fellow techs. It would be up to him to help her. And he would. But now he had a case. Mac tuned back into Stella's recital of the information they had and mentally shifted gears. _Time to go to work._

The incident in the lab had unexpected side effects. Both Mac and Hawkes, albeit for slightly different reasons, thought Hannah would retreat further into herself but the opposite was true. She spent a week watching Hawkes like, frankly, a hawk, before cornering him in the break room to apologise. Mac overheard part of the conversation and despite himself, slowed his steps to listen further.

"Doc, I wanted to apologise for uh…" Hannah trailed off embarrassed, not knowing quite how to say sorry for essentially assaulting her colleague.

Hawkes showed no such embarrassment and simply nodded for her to continue.

"Um, yeah. Sorry for that. My fight-or-flight response is pretty hardwired and a bit OTT. I…I didn't mean…"

"I know. I understand what adrenaline does to the body, even if your reactions were a bit…"

"Extreme? Hair-triggered?" she said with a sad smile. "I…"

She clamped her mouth shut and turned her head away before the sentence had been formed but there was a sudden cold sweat on her back making her shiver. _Nearly_. She forced a smile onto her face, although she could see it wasn't very convincing by the look on Hawkes' face, and started telling him about a wrestler doped with PCP who had gone on a rampage in the squad room during Flack's shift.

"…and this guy – I saw the mugshot, he must have been over six foot and about as wide, picks up the table and uses it to launch Mulreedy across the room like he was a baseball. I'm not sure what pissed Detective Flack off more – that he got clobbered in the face by someone's chair or that the guy up-chucked on his shoes when they finally got him under control!"

Both of them laughed, and Mac smiled as he waked away. Don had been moaning about his new shoes for months and had finally broken them in, only for them to apparently be ruined by this guy throwing up on them.

Mac snagged Hawkes on his way to the next crime scene with the intention of talking to him about _that_ night in the truck on the way there. He didn't really know where to start.

"Why didn't you make her go to the ER?" seemed like a fairly sensible place. There was no need to explain who or what he meant.

"She doesn't like hospitals. I've seen that before. Hundreds of times. Seemed like the easiest thing to do was to do it myself. It was minor enough, and it's healed nicely." Hawkes seemed fairly dismissive of the whole thing, which was unlike him.

"What was she apologising to you for?" pressed Mac, and although his eyes were on the road, he caught Sheldon's started glance across from the passenger seat in his peripheral vison.

"I can't Mac. She made me swear on my oath as a doctor. I can't break that."

Mac nodded, realising the position the young man was in. "And if she hadn't? Would you tell me then?" he pushed.

Hawkes' silence was all he needed to hear, confirming what he already knew. Hawkes would say nothing. And rightly, much as he was loath to admit it, despite how much more difficult it made things for him.

Mac pushed his concerns for the lab tech out of his mind in favour of the crime scene in front of him.


	3. Chapter 3

Regardless of Mac's concerns, Hannah's confidence grew from that night. It was as if she was starting accept that she was safe with them. She laughed and joked more, becoming more outgoing. To Flack's delight her wit was as sharp and sarcastic as his own and he made a point to seek her out whenever he was around and time allowed. She seemed to genuinely enjoy his company and he obviously enjoyed sparring with her; loving the sound of her laughter echoing through the lab. She even made Mac laugh, good naturedly bemoaning about her hair, commenting that at fourteen she would have killed to get her blonde hair back. "I went darker every winter but then one spring it never went back. Stuck as generic rodent for the rest of my life." Mac couldn't help laughing. She developed her own fashion style at work: exchanging the flat sensible shoes for some platform Skechers trainers which added three inches to her five foot stature, started French braiding her hair and ramming a selection of pens in the top part of the plait like hair sticks. Her lab work was faultless and she piped in with good suggestions on big cases whenever she had the chance.

Mac therefore had no reservations about putting her through her exams; promoting her over one of her fellows who had been with the lab longer, and getting her out in the field occasionally to help collect evidence. With Flack as an intermediary, she and Adam appeared to have settled into a tense but workable relationship, a vast improvement on the skittish behaviour of her first few weeks with them. Her developing close friendship with Don was clear for all to see, and Mac was glad the younger man had found a friend after what had happened with Jess. He was more relaxed since he had developed a friendship with Hannah, and had finally started wearing a tie to work again, recapturing the image of the smartly dressed detective that he'd had before Jess's death. She was as good for him as he was for her.

Of course, they hit a few bumps in the road along the way; working in a crime lab in a big city meant there were enough cases that, at some point everyone had one that had them emotionally invested in the outcome.

A particularly messy suicide in Brooklyn during her second winter with the lab was the case that caught Hannah. A young woman had fallen from the ledge outside her top floor apartment, falling a hundred feet straight down onto the street below. There appeared to be signs of a struggle in the apartment, and that was how Hannah found herself trying to collect evidence from the body of a potential homicide victim; at night, in the middle of a driving snowstorm. The weather was rapidly ruining any evidence there might be of the woman's attacker on the body or where she fell, so Mac had called everyone who was on shift and qualified out of the lab in order to comb the scene as quickly as possible before everything was lost. It was impossible to tell from first glance if she had fought with an attacker given the damage the fall had caused. Shivering as snow found its way into her hood and down her back, Hannah quickly took multiple pictures of the body and the surrounding area, scooped up samples of red slushy snow in lieu of normal swabs; then sat back on her heels to properly look at the body for a moment to see if there was anything she had missed. The damage done by the fall was horrific and Hannah was sure there wasn't a bone that not been broken when she hit the ground. She hoped death had been immediate on impact; the alternative was just too awful to consider. Hannah wrapped bags around the broken hands for Sid to try and collect trace from under her fingernails; it was a safer option than risk losing potential evidence by trying to do it herself in a snowstorm. Having done what she could, she moved out of the way so the body could be whisked away to the morgue and retreated gratefully into the warmth of the building.

In the lobby, Flack was gently talking to the distraught boyfriend, who was having his blood pressure taken by watchful paramedic. The man was wrapped in a blanket and visibly shaking, obviously in shock. Flack shot her a friendly smile as she passed, which she returned with interest.

Stepping into the woman's apartment, Hannah looked around for Mac. She wasn't going to leave the scene until he told her; she didn't get the opportunity to be out in the field often and wanted to make sure she got everything right. That included checking in with him before she left with evidence. The apartment was a bit of a mess and Hannah could see why the woman's death was being treated a suspicious. A lamp in the corner had been knocked over and it looked like the pictures scattered across the floor had been swept off a shelf. The couch was over turned under the window, which was broken with smears of blood on some of the jagged edges. First impression of the scene indicated the woman had struggled with someone and been pushed through the window.

She found Mac in the bedroom.

"Hannah, you done outside?" he asked.

"Yes boss, got what I could and sent her to Sid for the rest." Mac nodded. Hannah looked around the bedroom, catching sight of a particularly striking picture of the victim. "She was beautiful. Why her I wonder?" She shook her head. "Do you need me here or shall I get what I've got back to the lab?"

"Go on back to the lab, Danny just left with a case full of print lifts, I want you to help him work through them, find any that don't belong."

Mac hadn't been kidding when he said there was a case full of prints to work through; the pile on the lab bench was big enough to be quite daunting. Mentally rolling up her sleeves, Hannah set to work processing the heap.

It was Sid who first voiced the opinion that perhaps the homicide of Rebecca Chambers was not a homicide at all. The boyfriend had an airtight alibi, credit card receipts and multiple witnesses put him at a bar with his work buddies, celebrating the closure of a big new contract. Tox showed high levels of opiate painkillers in Rebecca's bloodstream, enough to be consistent with a suicide attempt. She had no pre mortem bruising indicating a struggle and there was no trace under her nails of an attacker. Changing tack, Danny and Adam set about digging into Rebecca's life to see if there was a possible explanation, leaving Hannah still ploughing through the prints lifted from the apartment. So far, everything that had been knocked over or moved appeared to have only been touched by the vic.

Every lead came back to Rebecca. The door had been locked from the inside and there were no signs of forced entry. Every print in the apartment belonged to either the vic or the boyfriend, and nothing to imply foul play.

Her boyfriend James Masters grew more and more upset with the direction of the investigation with each passing moment, refusing to believe Rebecca would have tried to take her own life. He was convinced NYPD were covering up something, adamant that what they were saying was wrong, that Rebecca had been murdered. His grief and disbelief of their findings displayed as anger and more than one of the team had seen his outbursts. Hannah had tried to talk to him once, trying to help him understand; but he rebuffed all offers of support no matter their origin.

Sid concluded COD as suicide, the level of opiates in her blood would have killed her eventually even if she hadn't then leapt from the window. Adam found evidence of an extended period of cyber-bullying when he accessed her social media accounts, along with one final unsent post by Rebecca which appeared to be a suicide note. Rebecca had stumbled around the apartment knocking things over herself when the painkillers hadn't done the job quickly enough; then broken the window and jumped.

The day they closed the case, Masters stormed into the precinct and had to be restrained by officers after overturning a desk in his rage. Masters was obviously completely cut up about his girlfriend and Flack had some measure of sympathy for the guy. It was clear he had been drinking the night before, the smell of booze hung around him like a thick cloud; and if Flack was any judge he was nursing a killer hangover. Had he done much better after Jess died? He uncuffed Masters once he calmed down and fetched him a cup of water. Masters ignored the water, shakily drawing a battered pack of cigarettes from a pocket. He caught Flack's look at the packet and waved them in his general direction as if offering him one. Flack shook his head.

"Can't smoke in here buddy."

Masters slumped, defeated. "Can I go? I'm sorry about..." he waved an arm towards the desk he had overturned.

Flack debated it for a moment, but Masters' now passive demeanour made up his mind.

"Sure. No more bustin' up my precinct though, are we clear?" he said sternly. "You won't get a free pass a second time."

Masters nodded in understanding and left, still weaving slightly.

The startled shout of dismay, quickly cut off, from the officer standing at the front door got Flack moving and he vaulted the desk in front of him, reaching the door in time to see Masters hold a gun to the head of a terrified taxi driver, who drove off at high speed. The officer was on the floor, dazed from a blow to the head and appeared missing his weapon.

"He asked me for a light…"

Tired as he was, Mac briefly considered not answering the phone when it rang. They had rolled into the Chambers case straight from another one and even he was looking forward to a rest. He picked up the phone, hoping there wasn't another new case already.

"Taylor."

"Mac! I'm in pursuit of Masters. He grabbed a gun from one of my guys and car jacked a cab," said Flack, swearing under his breath as unforgiving New York drivers didn't get out of his way fast enough.

"Where's he headed?"

"Currently heading south towards Manhattan Bridge, I think he's going home."

Mac's hand tightened involuntarily round the handset. _Hannah._

"Hannah's there on her own. I'm on my way."

The Avalanche screeched to a halt outside Masters' building, rapidly followed by a dozen police cruisers and Flack's unmarked car. Masters wasn't in the lobby, but the NYPD issue SIG he had stolen was lying on the carpet next to the lifts, which had all been called to the top floor. Not willing to wait for one to travel back down, Mac crossed the hall, wrenched open the door to the stairs and started climbing them two at a time.

Unaware of the drama unfolding, Hannah pushed her card under Masters' door. She wasn't sure quite why she wanted to offer him a sympathetic ear if he needed one, but after checking it was OK with Mac, she had left the lab and made her way back to the apartment to give him her card. There had been no answer when she knocked so she figured if she just left her number, he would call if he wanted to. Feeling like she wanted a bit of time to herself, she opted to take the stairs rather than the lift. Running footsteps made her pause as she reached the door to the stairway and she turned to see Masters stop at his door and start to fight with his keys, rushing to get the lock open. Concerned by his behaviour, Hannah walked towards him. She could hear him muttering now as he finally won his battle with the lock.

"Need to see her…got to see her again…Rebecca baby…wait for me I'm coming…"

Hannah started to run as he opened the door and darted inside, still talking to himself.

Mac skidded through the door just in time to see Hannah slither gracefully through the still broken window, out on to the ledge and disappear into the darkness. It felt for a moment as if his heart had first stopped, then started again, but now pounding in double time. Letting Flack confirm that Masters was definitely not in the apartment, Mac rushed to the window shouting her name, just in time to see her scramble up and over a balustrade wall and perch herself right on the corner of the roof next to Masters, who slung an arm around her shoulders. Feeling equally furious with her stupidity and worried for her safety, Mac eased himself carefully out the window and shuffled along the ledge, hanging on to the rough stonework with all his strength. Grabbing the balustrade she had shimmied up like a gecko, Mac steadied himself and peered at the two of them sat right on the edge, hearing Flack's muttered curses behind him.

"You gotta be kiddin' me. What's she doing?" Flack raised his voice. "Mac? You got a clear shot?"

"No. He's holding her, can't see if he has another weapon."

Hearing their voices, Hannah turned slightly and made a shooing gesture with her hand. Mac was caught momentarily speechless by her audacity and missed his opportunity to communicate that Masters was potentially dangerous. Helpless to do anything but wait, he listened.

"…don't understand. How can you?" asked Masters.

"You'd be surprised." Hannah spoke slowly and carefully. "I've thought about it more than once. But I know you don't want to do this. If you did, you wouldn't still be sat here would you? My presence or otherwise shouldn't make a difference to what you do: you don't know me; I'm not a friend here to talk you down. I know what it's like to lose someone, that's all. And following them won't bring them back."

"But it hurts!" cried Masters. "And I just want it to stop!"

"It won't. It never really leaves you. But isn't that the point of life? We are the sum of our experiences, events shape our lives whether we want them to or not. I ended up working in the crime lab, a job I love, with some wonderful people because of something awful that happened to me. If I'd done what you're thinking of doing, I would never have met them, never come to this amazing city. Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, life just gives you these kicks occasionally but it's how you can get through them, that matters in the end?"

Mac flushed cold and raised his gun as Masters brought his other arm around Hannah, not relaxing as they stood up. Masters was sobbing now, the awkward tears of a man not used to crying out loud. Hannah murmured something too low for Mac to hear and stepped out of his arms, stepped back away from the edge and held out her hand for Masters to follow. Masters took one more look over the edge to the street below at the circle of police cars with their flashing lights and the inevitable crowd that had developed to see if anything happened; and turned away, taking Hannah's hand and letting her lead him back to the balustrade Mac was still crouched behind.

Finally able to breathe, Mac holstered his weapon and backed up as Masters climbed back down to the ledge. It was difficult moving backwards towards the window; Flack grabbed Mac's jacket as soon as he was within reach and holding both the wall and each other in a sort of human chain, the awkward trio were able to backtrack and clamber back in through the broken window. Flack pounced on Masters as soon as he was inside as Mac helped Hannah follow him.

As soon as her feet touched the floor, Mac checked her for any visible injuries.

"You're ok?"

"I'm fine boss," she said and squeaked when Mac briefly enveloped her in a fierce hug. Surprised by the embrace from her normally reserved boss, Hannah was momentarily stiff as a board before relaxing. He released her and turned away.

"I'll speak to you in my office, go and wait for me please."

The sudden coldness in his voice shocked her and she managed a mumbled, "yes sir" before fleeing.

Flack hauled the handcuffed figure of Masters to his feet and watched her leave.

"You know, she did good Mac," he said. "That was gutsy. You wouldn't catch me right out on the edge like that, and I like heights."

Gently pushing the still sobbing man to get him moving, he talked to Masters as he led him away.

"Come on buddy, we're going for ride in my car. I'm arresting you for assaulting a police officer, assault with a deadly weapon and for making me run up ten flights of stairs after a _really_ long day. Your bonus prize is that you get to spend time being watched even while you pee so you don't try something stupid like this again. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you do say, can and will be used as evidence in a court of law...and _that's_ just gross," Flack added as the hungover Masters threw up on the way down the corridor. "You do that in my car and I'll have you for damage to public property as well, you hear me? You have the right to have an attorney present..."

Mac listened to Flack's voice fade, continuing to read the man his rights as they walked away. He stood at the window, waiting for his mind to settle.

Hannah was obediently waiting for him in his office when Mac finally returned to the lab. She sat quietly, waiting for him to speak. He started calmly.

"Can you explain to me why you thought it was a good idea to risk your life following him? You could have been killed!"

"He would have jumped." Very matter-of-fact.

Her composed reply suddenly infuriated him and he shouted at her.

"You don't know that!" Mac noticed the brief smug look. She _had_ known. How? Some of the anger trickled away. "We could be out there now, helping Sid to scrape you off the sidewalk!"

Mac paused, trying to rein in his temper so he could make her understand just how stupid she had been.

"Masters had a gun Hannah; he held a taxi driver at gunpoint and made him drive there."

"I didn't see one," she said, shaking her head.

"He dropped it in the lobby, but we didn't know if he had another one. You knew he was unstable and you still followed him out onto the roof! You know the protocol, close enough to talk to them, not sit on the edge next to them! He had his arm around you and could have dragged you off the edge with him!"

Hannah fell silent, still not really understanding. It had not occurred to her when Masters had blundered into the apartment muttering to himself about "being with her", that he was anything other than a grieving boyfriend driven to join the girl he loved by jumping to his death. She had followed him out the window without fear, years of climbing trees to hide as a child had given her sure feet and a head for heights. All she'd said to Masters was what she wished someone had said to her, and she was just glad it had worked. He could have been armed she supposed, but was fairly sure that if he had been, he would have shot himself in the apartment rather than take the effort of climbing out the window to jump.

Mac studied her, realising she genuinely hadn't given her own safety a moment's consideration. She had talked Masters down, quite skilfully if he was honest with himself; and as far as she was concerned that was the only thing that was important. She probably still would have done it even if she _had_ seen a weapon. It was almost like she thought she didn't matter, that the risk was worth the reward. The last of his anger drained away in the face of her genuine puzzlement.

"Hannah, if you had been hurt, it would have hurt all of us."

She smiled then, taking his admonishment as a confirmation of her place in the lab, with friends.

Mac gave her a day's suspension; partly for breaking protocol regarding a potentially suicidal individual but mostly for scaring him, and let her leave. He sat at his desk staring blankly at the seat she had vacated. How did someone who projected a personality as bright as she did, have no comprehension of her worth to them? _What the hell had happened to her?_


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn't until she had been with them just over eighteen months that it occurred to Mac that her birthdays must have passed without mention. He doubted the low grade techs had marked the occasion, she had barely spoken to them even when she was one of them. Hannah had never mentioned her birthday to any of the team of CSIs and it had never been acknowledged. Their busy lives in the lab meant that generally people relied on their colleagues reminding them of upcoming birthdays: people brought in cake or similar and left it in the break room for everyone to help themselves, sometimes there were small gatherings when cards and gifts were exchanged. There was always an active case that overshadowed any possibility of a proper celebration but Mac knew Danny had dragged Flack to a bar on Jess's birthday and Stella had cooked for Mac on his. Thinking it a little odd that she hadn't said anything even to Flack given how close they were, and feeling more than a guilty for not noticing sooner; Mac rummaged through the personnel files of his team and found her birthday had been only the previous week. Grateful that it was a quiet day in the lab, he formed a plan from the spark of an idea and quietly, he organised everyone. Danny left to get some nibbles, flowers and a cake. Stella distracted Hannah and Adam called Lyndsey, Sheldon, Sid and Flack to let them know what they were planning.

An hour later, Hannah followed Stella to the crowded break room and was stunned to find all her friends there, with cake and flowers.

"Happy birthday for last week Hannah," said Stella and gave her a brief one-armed hug, an action quick enough that she didn't have time to react before she was released. It was then repeated by everyone until Hannah felt quite overwhelmed.

"I…ah…thank you…I've never had...," she stopped as her throat closed with emotion and tears prickled her eyes. _Almost said that in front of everyone._ Mac stepped forward, realising he may have misjudged things, and she backed away from him, colliding with the wall. He quickly gestured for everyone to leave them alone. The team filed out of the room with some worried glances, particularly from Flack.

"Hannah?" his gruff voice broke through her impending panic and she met his concerned gaze. His blue eyes seemed to be full of compassion and she managed a shuddering breath. "I'm sorry, I didn't know this would affect you, I hadn't realised we'd missed your birthday."

There. Gentle, non-judgemental, simple explanation. Nothing to be scared of. Her breath came easier now although nothing would halt the burning blush creeping up her neck and setting her cheeks aflame. _Idiot. Must be stronger._

"Hannah?" he was closer now. When had he moved? Man was like a ninja or something. Everyone else had gone – when had that happened? So she was left with the boss, a man she tried so hard to impress, so desperate for him to be proud of her.

"Hannah, what happened?" he asked, consciously repeating the question he had asked that night after the incident with the broken glass.

"I've never had a birthday party," she whispered so quietly he barely caught it. The shocked look on her face told him she was a surprised as he at what she'd just admitted. Apparently she had not planning to say it. Never? His heart clenched at the implication. _Oh, Hannah_. Taking one final step towards her, he put one arm round her back, ignoring the flinch that she mostly managed to disguise as a roll of her shoulders; and the other gently round the back of her neck, easing her head to his chest. He held her as the inevitable tears began to flow, turning his body so they were hidden from everyone except him, soaking into his shirt. She clung to his jacket as if it was a life preserver as the storm of her tears passed. There would be consequences for this, she knew – one didn't just break down _on_ the boss, clutching at him like a drowning sailor and not get at least sent home, if not fired. Or worse, another chance to play dodge-the-questions-that-hurt with the lady who had done her psych eval. But she couldn't quite bring herself to let go. His arms felt _safe_ and it had been a long time, _so long_ , since she had felt anything like it.

"Boss…I'm sorry," Danny ducked his head in the door and apologised instinctively in the face of Mac's glare. "We've got a big one, all hands on deck, we gotta go."

Mac tightened his arms round Hannah for a moment and nodded for Danny to go. He stepped back carefully, buttoning his suit jacket over the damp patch on his dress shirt.

"I'm sorry sir..." she started quietly, looking at his shirt, but Mac overrode her apology with a wave of his hand.

"It'll dry and I don't have time to change it," he said, noticing but not commenting that she had called him "sir" not "boss". He started towards the door. "You coming? All hands on deck means you as well."

The watery smile that she gave him chased some of the sorrow from her face, and while her eyes were red and her cheeks still flushed, it was with the same smile that she followed him to the lift to the parking garage. _A small step closer_.

No one mentioned what had happened, and in the end they were all grateful that none of the food had been eaten – the case rumbled on, a man with something to prove had blown up a subway station and threatened to do more damage if his conditions weren't met. Racing to find him and to understand his strange request about his murdered wife, the team lived on take-out delivered to the lab and two day old birthday cake, sleeping when they could. Mac would try and grab an hour's sleep on the couch in his office whenever the infrequent urge took him, but being used to insomnia and lying awake, he pushed himself harder than the others; with the exception of Adam and Hannah, neither of whom had been out of the lab since it had all started. Adam eventually slunk off to his apartment when Mac caught him asleep at his computer in front of a finished explosives analysis, muttering under his breath that he was awake now and would be for hours. Mac ignored his protests, called the lift and bundled him in, sternly telling him to take a cab home rather than drive. Hannah was more resistant, but eventually relented and allowed herself to be parked on Mac's couch with a case folder "to give her eyes a rest from the screen". As Mac predicted, when he peered through the glass walls of his own office not ten minutes later, she was fast asleep on his couch, case file tucked securely in her arms like a teddy bear. Safe in her boss's office, wrapped in a blanket that smelled of him, and surrounded by the smell of his aftershave which reminded her of what it had felt like when he held her; Hannah slept deeply and dreamlessly for the first time in years.

Eventually, the bomber was caught, the mystery surrounding his dead wife explained and the world moved on. "Normal" life continued in the lab: homicides, accidental deaths, strange evidence, sudden flashes of insight from different people; and the so chase of finding leads, answering questions and building cases continued.

Through it all sailed Hannah, now happier than she'd ever been. She had friends who were like a family, she had respect and worth and more than that, she had _him_. She had someone to look up to as a father-figure, one who could calm her with a single look. One who without asking or knowing the darkness that threatened her peace, was able to combat it by smiling at her, or just simply by being there, in the same room. She also had Don, the steady presence by her side, always ready with a smile, ready to make her laugh when she needed it.

It was inevitable therefore, that it was not to last.

After the extended period of undisturbed sleep in Mac's office, Hannah's regular nightmares were easy to keep at bay. She would simply close her eyes in her cheap apartment and imagine she was in his office, on _his_ couch, rather than her own. When that started to fail, she used exhaustion: going for long runs after work, working double and triple shifts, and then added volunteer work on top of that. The dreams crept back in like weasels, slipping through the cracks. When exhaustion failed a few weeks later, she supplemented her days with caffeine, used make up to cover at least some of the dark circles under her eyes and carried on. The face that had haunted her childhood mocked her in her dreams, indistinct and unclear, the memories hazy with the passage of time.

The impending disaster came while the team where hunting a serial linker targeting young men alone in Central Park, binding them hand and foot then stabbing them what appeared to be a shark's tooth blade. Hannah stumbled into the lab for her shift after a sleepless night, aware that the three coffees she had already had were barely keeping her functioning. Everyone was pulling doubles while they chased the killer, but she was beyond exhausted. Mac had given her a concerned look which she had ignored in favour of making sure her feet didn't trip over themselves. The day dragged on and when her shift was finally over she meandered back into the locker room to find a change of clothes. Her top and jeans stank, lab coats only provided so much protection from the hazards of the job and rummaging through garbage was a filthy task. Dressed only in her jeans and bra, Hannah stared into her locker. Apparently in her exhausted daze she had forgotten a critical part of this operation. Laundry. There was another pair of jeans, a change of underwear and even a pair of shoes in her locker but no top. She continued to gaze into the locker uncomprehendingly; her tired and muddled mind wondering if she just looked long enough, a top would somehow be there. She didn't hear the door open or the strangled intake of breath behind her. When the hand touched her bare shoulder, she reacted on instinct just the way her self-defence instructor had assured her she would. She grabbed the offending hand and the arm it was attached to and spun quickly, jutting out her hip as she did so. Using the other person's weight against them, she flipped them over her hip and released just before they hit the floor. She grabbed her dirty top and dragging it over her head, she left at a flat sprint.

Mac had carefully watched Hannah all day, he knew her well enough by now to know she was beyond her normal level of tiredness but until she made a mistake or came to him, there was little he could do. Her work was exemplary and he had no call to question her. He knew enough to know that pushing her would get him nowhere. He watched her shuffle off to the locker room at the end of her shift, definitely now concerned. She had been pulling doubles all week as a matter of routine like everyone else and this departure from that routine bothered him. Flack breezed past his door on his way out while Mac was still trying to work out what he could do. He checked the time and made a quick decision, knowing the pair were close friends. If anyone could talk to her, it would be Flack.

"Don!" he called, grabbing his coat and following the detective towards the lift. "Hold up!"

"Yeah Mac, what's up?" the detective slowed to let Mac catch up with him.

"Could you look in on Hannah for me?" he asked, nodding towards the locker room. "I've got a meeting with Sinclair that I've already rearranged twice so I can't do it myself."

Flack looked at him quizzically but agreed with a smile. "No problem. I was going to get take-out pizza and rent a movie. Maybe just what she needs?"

"Thanks Don, I appreciate it."

Flack waved him off with an easy grin and changed direction towards the locker room as the lift doors slipped closed. He nudged the locker room door open with his foot and called out.

"Hey, Rivers! Wanna grab a pizza wi' me?"

Or at least he tried. The words died in his throat. He tried again but only managed a choked sort of gasping noise. She had her back to him, clad only in jeans and a bra. Her back was a mess of scars, some twisted and ropey looking, some wide, some thin. Even the scars had scars. There was barely a patch of unblemished skin on her back and shoulders that he could see. He shuffled closer to his friend in shock, not believing what his eyes told him. He reached out to touch her shoulder and was suddenly airborne, her bony hip digging into him as he was pivoted neatly round it to land flat on his back on the floor. Hannah never even saw him, simply donned her top and fled. Winded as he was, by the time he reached the lifts, she was long gone and so was his appetite. _To hell with pizza. Alcohol._ He scrubbed a hand across his face, feeling the look of shock etched on his features. _Lots of alcohol._

When Hannah arrived for her shift the following morning, Mac was waiting for her.

"Enjoy your night off?" he asked gently. The sudden rabbit-in-headlights look puzzled him.

"Ah...no...I..." Hannah stumbled over what to say. She had left the building the night before as fast as possible, picked a direction and started to run. She had kept running until she threw up, sobbing and gasping for breath, sure she was going to get fired. Lost in an unfamiliar part of town, she had flagged a cab and spent the night curled up on her sofa hugging her knees, both wishing for and fearing sleep.

"You didn't go for pizza with Flack?"

Hannah shook her head trying not to show how nauseous she suddenly felt. _Don? Oh_ _ **no**_ _._ "Where do you want me today?"

Mac studied her carefully, noting the make-up and the dark circles it covered and her lost, slightly embarrassed look. She was too pale, and he waited a moment to let her talk to him if she wanted to, but relented and let her change the subject. He turned and walked with her to the AV lab where Adam was already at a computer.

"Adam can fill you in, but this image," Mac gestured towards a grainy picture on the plasma, "is currently the clearest we have of our best possible suspect. I need you two to clean it up so we can get an ID." Hannah nodded, still not trusting her voice or stomach and breathed a quiet sigh of relief when Mac left the lab.

Hours later, they had made slow progress, but enough to try biometric analysis of the face and start running it through the databases in hope of a hit. Adam happened to glance over at Hannah, only to find she was fast asleep, head resting on her hands, having apparently dozed off watching the scan run. Adam cleared his throat, and when that didn't work, nudged the corner of the desk with his foot. Hannah woke with a start, arms flailing wildly for a second as she caught her balance on her chair. She glanced over to Adam who was very carefully looking the other way.

"Ah...your sleeve is...um..." he trailed off, unable to finish.

Hannah looked down, horrified to find that one of her sleeves had slid up, exposing a section of scarred forearm. She tugged the disobedient sleeve down again, looking around as she did so to make sure no one else had seen. Neither of them saw as Mac turned the corner and slowed to listen in the shadows, out of view.

"You know don't you?" she hissed accusingly.

Adam met her eyes for the briefest possible moment before looking away again.

"I've always known." He shrugged. "Since the first day I saw you. You're the same as me."

It was an admission, quietly done. Mac had been hoping Adam would open up to them eventually but perhaps the two of them could help heal each other.

"Thanks." _For not telling anyone._

"Don't mention it." _Ever again._

Satisfied that all was well, Mac slipped away as quietly as he had arrived.


	5. Chapter 5

Two days later, it was abundantly clear that all was not well: Hannah and Flack circled each other like wary dogs. Hannah avoided Flack's company whenever physically possible and refused to acknowledge him when it wasn't. Everyone noticed the tension between the normally close friends. Eventually Mac reached the limit of his patience, after yet another meeting to discuss progress on their serial killer where Hannah had studiously ignored Flack's frequent attempts to get her attention. He hauled the two of them into his office afterwards and stared at them both sat the other side of the desk, carefully not looking at each other.

"What the hell _wrong_ with you two?" he stood and turned, slamming a folder down on his desk in frustration, causing Hannah to flinch violently. With his back to them, Mac missed it, but Flack didn't. Mac turned back to face them, his voice rising.

"If there's a problem between you, you need to sort it. I need to know I can rely on you both in the field and not tiptoe round each other and possibly miss something. We have a serial killer running round the city and I am not prepared to start adjusting shifts just so you can avoid each other. What's going on?"

Hannah looked fairly alarmed in the face of his anger, but Flack merely looked embarrassed. When it was clear Hannah was going to continue with her statue impersonation and remain silent and motionless, Flack took the initiative; despite the filthy glare Hannah gave him from the corner of her eyes. She dropped her gaze to the floor once he started speaking.

"There's no problem Mac. The other night? I went to ask Hannah if she wanted a pizza but I surprised her in her underwear in the locker room. It was a bit embarrassing for both of us. That's it. It's nothing, really."

 _Half truth._

"Is that all?" Mac held up his hand to stop Flack in his tracks when it was clear Hannah was going to let him do all the talking. "Hannah?"

"Yes sir," she muttered, keeping her eyes on the floor. There was relief in her voice.

 _Lie._

Suddenly Mac thought he knew what was going on. Hannah rarely called him "sir" anymore, only when she was upset. Like everyone else, she called him "boss"; he had yet to convince her to call him by his name. The two were close friends and now that he looked closer, as the fear of his temper left her, he could see Hannah was also quite embarrassed. Perhaps they were more than friends? Mac subsided back into his chair.

"Thank you Hannah. If you would to return to work, I need to discuss something else with the detective."

Both men watched her as she fled Mac's office without another word.

Mac released a sigh as the door closed behind her and fixed a stern gaze on his friend.

"Don, are you sure you know what you're doing? What happened to Jess hit you hard and Hannah is..."

Mac paused briefly to try and find words that best categorised her. _Vulnerable?_ _Probably. An abuse victim? Almost certainly. Ready for a relationship with a guy still grieving over the death of his last girlfriend? Definitely not._

"Complicated," he finished lamely.

Flack cottoned on to the conclusion Mac had reached and stood up, starting to angrily pace Mac's office.

"What? No! C'mon Mac!" He made a dismissive noise in Mac's direction and stopped his pacing in front of the desk, leaning over it a little to make his point.

"I kinda resent the assumption you know? It's not like that, I _swear_. Yeah, I care about her, but she's _just_ a friend. A good friend." He drew a deep breath and sat back down. "She never knew Jess, so it's… _easier_ somehow. She's…" Flack paused, wondering how much he should say. "I think she's been through a lot and she needs a friend. I just want to pick her up and put her in my pocket, keep her safe from everything, you know?"

 _Truth._

Mac finally smiled. He did know, all too well. He nodded and offered an apology that sounded stilted, even to his own ears. Flack accepted it with grace that Mac wasn't sure he could have mustered if their positions had been reversed and left to find Hannah. Mac's mind turned the problem over and over looking for an answer but he simply didn't have enough information and ultimately, he knew that she would have to come to him rather than the other way around. Sighing, he picked up a pen and started working through the pile of paperwork on his desk.

Hannah didn't know what to say to Flack when he popped his head round the lab door.

"Hey."

Still wary, she smiled cautiously, wondering why he had lied to Mac about that night. Flack took the smile as an invitation and ducked into the lab, leaning on the door frame.

"Pizza?" asked Flack. "I never got to ask you the other night," he said with an easy, non-judgemental smile.

Tension she hadn't even been aware of ran from her shoulders. He wasn't going to mention what she had done. Or more importantly, what he must have _seen_.

"I can't," she said smiling a little ruefully. "I've not been very productive in the last two days, I need to catch up."

"Ok, no problem." Flack turned to leave.

"Don?" She caught his eyes as he turned back. "Thank you." _For not saying anything._

He gave her a sincere smile and nodded, knowing and acknowledging exactly what she was thanking him for; and left her to her work.

Mac smiled the following day when he heard of a pizza being delivered to the precinct in Flack's name, apparently from Hannah. The pair resumed their easy camaraderie around each other; and the case rolled forward. Mac continued to watch Hannah and Flack interact, noting the warm glances between them and that whenever someone mentioned pizza, they would catch each other's eyes and grin as if sharing an inside joke. They started spending more time together outside work, and Hannah regularly spent the night on Flack's couch after sharing take out and talking through, rather than watching, a DVD. They never spent time at her place. She had a rule, she'd said, "no guys in my apartment, not even you." Flack had been a little hurt for a moment before she smiled, taking the sting from her words.

The Park Shark Killer, as the media had dubbed him; was eventually shot in a fire fight with NYPD and detained, handcuffed to his hospital bed. Danny organised a night out to celebrate the closure of the case but Hannah declined, saying she already had plans. Mac walked down to the parking garage with her only to find Flack there waiting for her, and he started to wonder if Flack had lied to him about them only being friends; because apparently her plans for the evening once again involved just the two of them. Hannah gave Flack a brilliant smile, which faltered as she patted her pockets.

"Ah, my cell phone! Must have left it in my locker. I'll be right back!"

She scampered off in the direction of the lift back to the lab.

Mac watched as Flack leaned back nonchalantly against his car, and followed the direction of his gaze. Flack's eyes followed Hannah until she was out of sight and then rested intently on where she would reappear.

Mac stepped forward, invading Flack's personal space and effectively trapping the taller man against the hood of his car.

"You lied to me," growled Mac. "If you hurt her..."

The accusation and almost-threat hung in the air between the two friends for a moment before Flack shook his head almost sadly.

"No. I didn't. She only needs a friend."

"And if she changes her mind?"

Anger started to smoulder in Flack's eyes and he pushed Mac back a couple of steps, advancing on him with his hands clenched at his sides.

"Then I will be _whatever_ she needs me to be," he hissed.

Mac stepped away, a little taken aback by Flack's intensity. The look on his face when Hannah reappeared waving her cell with a grin made it clear that while he was happy to be her friend, things ran a little deeper than "friends" for the detective. Mac left for the bar to meet the rest of the team, still deep in thought.

Two weeks later, the mutilated body of missing eight year old Michelle Evans was found dumped in an alley near Central Park by two unis responding to a public disturbance call. The drunk they had collared had blundered into the alley to throw up before the officers could get him in the car and they had found the body behind a dumpster. Pace in the lab picked up again as they searched for anything in the alley or on the body that would help them identify and catch the sick individual who had tortured a child.

From the CCTV footage they obtained of the street leading to the site, the girl appeared to have been dumped the night before out of the back seat of a large, dark SUV with no plates or particular identifying features. A partial view of a man's face was all they had, not enough for facial rec. Lyndsey had taken pictures of the tyre treads left behind, but they had come back to a generic brand used across the country, available in hundreds retailers in the city alone. No help there. Hannah had been on garbage detail again, rummaging through the dumpsters for anything that might be useful. She'd turned up two knives, but neither appeared to be related to the case. They were bagged, tagged and sent back to evidence, awaiting a quieter moment when she could examine them.

Sid's examination of the small body had proved distressing, not least for the multitude of cuts and burns across her tiny frame. There were signs of repeated sexual assault and strangulation and he found himself unable to keep his emotions at bay as he made his report to Mac. After stopping and starting several times, he gave up and simply gave Mac the file and excused himself for some air. Mac watched Sid leave with a troubled expression. He knew the young ones always upset the ME, but this case was different. It was as if the girl had been _used_ , and when it became too much, simply discarded like a broken toy. In his admittedly limited experience, paedophiles generally liked to keep their targets well until they killed them, but this little girl had been the victim of a sadist who appeared to have enjoyed causing her as much pain as possible. The girl had high levels of drug metabolites in her blood, suggesting she had been drugged, probably to keep her under control. So far, it was unclear what the drug had been suggesting it was a unique cocktail.

That night Mac awoke to the sound of his cell phone buzzing across his desk. He was sat on the couch in his office again, slumped to the side with a painful crick in his neck from dozing off sitting up. He had been re-reading what little they had on this monster they were chasing, hoping that they caught him before another young girl suffered at his hands. Groggily, he stood and grabbed the phone, answering it without looking at the caller ID while massaging his neck with his other hand.

"Mac?" Flack's voice was low and intense, a sign he was hanging onto his emotions with his fingernails. "There's another one missing. Same age, height, hair colour. They could be sisters. I think he's got another one."

Mac closed his eyes. "Ok, send me details, I'll start waking people up." He ended the call without waiting for Flack's response and started dialling.


	6. Chapter 6

The team trickled in, those living closest first. Hannah was last to arrive, her eyes looking particularly haunted. She had managed to get some sleep but the faces in her dreams had been clearer, like they had been all those years ago. She thought she might have seen…but that was just the exhaustion playing tricks. Downing her coffee, she set her shoulders, pushing all thoughts of her own pain aside. It was a handy trick albeit not a particularly healthy one, but the situation demanded it. There was a girl in trouble and wallowing in her own problems was not going to help them find her.

Danny, Lyndsey and Hawkes left to process the kidnapping site, leaving Adam and Hannah in the lab processing what little trace they had from the body. Mac had taken Stella to talk to the hysterical mother of the second girl, and to confirm what they already knew: this was not a kidnap and ransom.

The team gathered in the conference room a few hours later to discuss what they had so far. Mac gave them a brief overview of Sid's findings from the autopsy of Michelle Evans, along with images of some of the more unusual wounds. COD was multiple blunt force trauma, but her death had been hastened by blood loss and a reaction to the drugs she had been given. Hannah shrank back in her seat, unable for a moment to contain her reaction to the horror. Mac let her have a moment; passing over, rather than lingering on her rapid breathing and pale face, and picked on Danny to start the ideas bouncing. She pulled herself together and joined in eventually. She and Adam had no luck in identifying the man from the partial view they had from CCTV, the quality was still too low to get any hits with facial recognition, despite their hard work.

What little trace evidence they had, confirmed the presence of old glass fibres on the body, probably roof insulation; and wood splinters under her nails suggested Michelle had been kept in an attic or storage area but there where thousands of places that still had old glass fibre insulation and it had not helped narrow their search.

Examination of the backgrounds of both girls appeared to show little correlation apart from their physical similarity. They didn't go to the same school, live in the same neighbourhood, move in the same circles of friends or apparently have anything in common. Including method of kidnapping. Michelle had apparently been taken from her bed and had been missing for three days before her body was found. No prints or trace had been found in her bedroom, the window had been open and to all intents and purposes, she had appeared to be a runaway. The case had gone cold. The second girl, nine year old Clementine Hooper, had been taken in an apparent car-jacking. She was strapped into the back seat as her mom was forced from the car at knife point. The best eye witness report had the perp as "a guy in a hoodie with a knife".

Adam analysed the footage from CCTV to realise that Mrs Hooper had been followed and the car-jacking wasn't the opportunistic crime it seemed: they had been targeted. With that to work backwards from, as well as a BOLO out on the car and the girl, and a vague description of the perp from the hysterical mother, Adam and Hannah went back to their failed attempt to ID the face from the CCTV still. Adam tried to enhance the limited view they had while Hannah examined the image in detail, trying to see if there was a reflection they could use to get a better look at his face.

With the additional details they had, Adam and Hannah eventually turned up five possible matches in AFIS.

Hannah's stomach turned over as the faces went up on the plasma and she wasn't able to muffle a cry of distress, drawing the attention of Mac and Stella as they walked past the door to the AV lab.

"That's him. Trust me that's him. His name's Les Bowman," blurted Hannah, pointing at the fourth mugshot. She swallowed heavily. "Oh…I'm going to be sick," and stumbled backwards before turning and pushing roughly between Mac and Stella, bolting for the bathroom.

Mac barked orders over his shoulder as he started to follow the distraught young woman.

"Adam? Get me names and locations of all of these, especially _him_ ," pointing to the man Hannah had indicated.

Adam's reply was lost to Mac as he opened the locker room door. He could hear her retching and gasping in the stall at the end and moved closer.

"Hannah? Who is Les Bowman? How do you know him?" More retching. He knocked on the cubicle door gently. "Hannah, talk to me."

Hannah's stomach finally stopped trying to turn itself inside out and she drew in a shuddering breath.

"I'm fine sir," she managed calmly.

Back to calling him "sir" again, he noticed. That only ever happened when something was wrong, it was like an early warning system for him now.

"The hell you are!" he growled, slapping his hand on the door in frustration before realising that getting angry with her wasn't going to solve anything. "What happened Hannah?" he continued more gently. He hoped she realised what he was asking: he always asked the same question when trying to get her to talk, and twice now he had been able to get her to the point of trusting him enough to be willing to say something.

"I ate a bad hot dog I guess." There was a pause. "Sorry boss."

So she knew what she had done, automatically calling him "sir" and putting him on his guard. He closed his eyes. He would get nothing from her now. Mac leaned his head against the cubicle door for a moment, wishing he could just gather her up in his arms and make it all go away, whatever it was. Pulling his professionalism round him like a cloak, he straightened up and sighed. There was a job to do and standing here wasn't going to get it done. He was her boss as well as her friend.

"Go home Hannah. If you're unwell I can't have you in the lab. Take the day and come back tomorrow. I'll talk to you then. We're busy but we will manage."

"Thank you sir," was the muffled reply from the other side of the door, confirming for him that it wasn't food poisoning. He shook his head, frowning in disappointment that he had not been able to get through to her. He left the locker room still struggling to get his roiling emotions under control and was immediately accosted by Adam, who called him back to where he was working.

"Boss, got details for all five guys but this one is a bit odd." He thrust a tablet into Mac's hand. "The guy Hannah pointed to. We got a hit on the face but not on the name."

Looking down the details Adam had found, Mac could see the DMV hit on the face Hannah had indicated. But the name was different.

"He's using an alias?"

"He's using several. Check it out." Adam leaned over the tablet in his boss's hands to swipe across and show him. "Multiple identities all with the same picture. Phones, utility bills, everyone is in a different name. I checked with rental agencies under the name on the driver's license and got a hit, and an address."

Striding back to the locker room, Mac kicked open the door with his foot. It was immediately clear Hannah was already gone. Mac clenched his jaw. He would have find out why she ID'd him and how she had known his name when she came in the following day.

"Get me a BOLO out and a search warrant for this guy's apartment." Mac said to Adam, reaching for his phone.

Adam grinned. "I already phoned Flack, BOLO's out and he's going to meet you there with the warrant."

"Good job Adam." Mac clapped him on the shoulder as he left.

"You're telling me she ID'd this guy? From what?" asked Flack incredulously as they carefully climbed the stairs to Les Bowman's apartment followed by a crowd of uniformed officers.

"Good question. I wish I knew," said Mac. "I thought I was getting somewhere and then it was like a shutter came down. One minute she's vulnerable and the next she's an Amazon warrior."

Flack grinned, thinking Mac only knew the half of it. Amazon warrior indeed. Mac had not been with him night he had arrested the wife beater in midtown. The guy had priors for domestic abuse and had beaten his wife to death; then stabbed her in the neck just to make sure. Multiple neighbours had heard everything through the walls and witnesses saw him leaving the building covered in blood, still clutching the bloody kitchen knife. He was long gone by the time Flack had arrived with Stella and Hannah to process the scene. Hannah had been outside in the alley rummaging through dumpsters looking for the knife when Flack had received the call via dispatch that the perp had been spotted making his way back to the apartment via the alleyways. Sprinting down the side of the building, Flack heard a pained yelp from an alley branching off to his left and accelerated; his heart pounding, thinking Hannah had been hurt. He turned the corner in time to see her sweep the suspect's legs out from under him and in a complicated move, keep her legs tangled with his as he went down while she executed a perfect left jab to his temple. She rolled out of the way as he crashed to the ground, flipped the dazed man on his front and slammed her knee between his shoulder blades, centring her weight over his lungs. She grabbed his arms and bent them up and backwards, effectively convincing him not to try moving. She spotted Flack approaching and flashed him a berserker's grin. There was a rising bruise on her cheek with a cut that looked like it had been made by the sovereign ring on the guy's right hand but her eyes sparkled with excitement and battle joy.

"Ah, little help here?"

He had cuffed the embarrassed wife beater and shoved him into the waiting arms of the uniformed officers that had finally caught up with him.

"You OK?" He had asked, indicating the swelling on her cheek

"Just another battle wound. I wasn't going to let him get away," she had replied, flashing him with a megawatt smile. She flexed her sore hand gently. "He has a hard head though." She grinned at him impishly. "That was fun."

"Next time, leave him to us OK? He could have really hurt you, he's already beaten one woman to death."

She had thrown him a disgusted look and stalked away without another word. Too late Flack realised how that must have sounded. She was a wounded soul but she was a fighter, and he had inadvertently implied she couldn't look after herself.

When she hadn't shown up at his place for their regular pizza and movie night the following evening, he had a pretty good idea where she was. There was a bench overlooking the lake in Central Park that she frequented, usually when something was troubling her. Flack had joined her there often enough to be able to let his feet navigate while his mind was otherwise occupied. They had spent many hours together on that bench, usually with him doing most of the talking to fill the silence. What he'd said to Mac about it being easier to talk to her was true, and some of the pain over Jess's death was finally starting to heal with her help. At first, he had worried that he was being selfish using her friendship in this manner, but she had quelled him with an imperious look; pointing out that if she hadn't wanted to listen, she would have told him to shut up already.

As he predicted, she was sat on "their" bench, watching the city lights shimmer on the water. Flack knew she had heard his approach because she didn't jump when he spoke.

"You know, you should be careful out here at night."

She stood and turned to him, fury clear on her face.

"I can take care of myself!"

"I know. I was talking about the trail of beaten up rapists and muggers I expected to have to follow to find you here. Have you any idea how much paperwork that would give me?"

Then she was laughing and Flack knew he had been forgiven. Hannah sat back down and he joined her, letting her scoot closer to him. She was starting to shiver, it was a cold night and she looked like she had been out here for hours.

"Is it OK if I..." he said gently, slowly and carefully moving his arm behind her.

She nodded and let him wrap a long arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to his warmth. She wouldn't let him do this very often, despite how close they had become.

"Long day huh?" Flack asked when she remained silent.

She nodded again, still not speaking. They sat in silence for a while.

"I can't…I can't talk about it," she finally said, quietly.

One of _those_ days then. A day where she found it hard to keep going, hard to be strong. The knowledge of what he had seen, what he knew, seemed to sit between them on the bench. He had never mentioned it; seeing the relief on her face when she realised he lied to Mac to protect her was enough to ensure his silence. He would take her secret to his grave if that was what she wanted.

"I know. But that's OK." He squeezed her briefly, reassuring her that he meant it. He did mean it. He didn't need to her to tell him what had happened in her past for him to offer her his unconditional support.

He'd held her like that, pretending he couldn't see the tears on her face as she stared at the lake, knowing she wanted and needed nothing more than exactly what he was already doing. Just being there.

Flack had told no one what he had seen that night in the locker room, and wasn't planning on sharing the fact that a skinny girl who was more than foot shorter than him, had not only dumped him on his back like a beetle without any apparent effort, but had also managed to get out of the building before he'd even got his breath back. She was made of steel, forged by something horrific she could not talk about, even to him, and he was in awe of her for it.

"So what do we know about this guy?" he asked as they neared Bowman's door, shaking his head to clear his thoughts of Hannah.

"In the country illegally, we're is still trying to trace his movements before he entered the US. Got questioned in Arizona over a child prostitution racket but was released without charge. No prints or DNA in the system, just his photo. By the time the local PD realised his driver's license was a fake he'd skipped town and dropped off the map. That's it. We don't even know when he arrived in New York."

When there was no answer, they broke the door down. Bowman's apartment was empty and had apparently been so for a while. Cursing another dead end, Mac phoned in for a couple of CSIs to comb the place for evidence and followed Flack back to the precinct to interview the other possible facial rec matches, leaving a uni on guard at the busted door. By the time they arrived, the other four men had been brought in. Two were released almost immediately with air-tight alibis for both kidnappings and the body dump. Prints and DNA swabs were taken to confirm what everyone already knew from talking to them – they were not involved. Mac left his team chasing down the alibis for the remaining men and headed to Hannah's apartment: he needed answers before the morning.


	7. Chapter 7

Mac had never been to her place before and hoped his arrival would not be taken as an invasion of her strictly kept privacy – as close as they were, even Flack had never been in her building. But the time for privacy was over. Whatever the problem was, it was now affecting her work. That made it his business, whether she liked it or not and he was determined to get to the bottom of things.

There was no answer when he knocked. He kept knocking, assuming she was either asleep or ignoring him. It wasn't until Mac noticed the building super sidle along the corridor towards him that he realised he had been banging on her door for a long time and that his knuckles were sore. There was no way she was asleep. The super had been called by a suspicious neighbour and seemed initially unwilling to cooperate, but gave in when Mac showed him his badge. After what felt like an eternity the scruffy man returned with his keys and let Mac into the apartment.

It wasn't quite what he had expected. It had the standard basics: kitchen area, couch, bathroom, bedroom. But there was minimal personalisation, no individual touches, no mementos. There were boxes and boxes of books; as a fellow insomniac, Mac could appreciate an apartment full of books but these were still in boxes: unloved, unread. It was as if she had never unpacked when she moved in. There was a rumpled blanket on the couch, and the bed was clearly unused. There were a couple of take-out cartons in the bin, but no food in the fridge. There was coffee but only one mug. For its Spartan appearance, it was tidy – the kitchen was clean, there was clean washing drying in the bathroom, the small amount of dirty clothes were in a basket and the rest of her wardrobe was hung up neatly in the closet. But the tiny apartment felt more like a cell than a home. It was clear that much of her time here was spent on the couch; watching the door, if the indent in the fabric was anything to go by. Mac shivered. Everything about Hannah's apartment screamed of a deep and overwhelming fear. Of something…or some _one_? An abusive ex maybe? That could explain her gravitation towards Flack, his height and no-nonsense attitude would deter all but the most determined of ex-boyfriends. And his badge would do for the rest. Mac frowned as he looked around the unwelcoming apartment, struggling to understand how she could bear to live like this. Perhaps he should have done more to help her? Made her open up? Offered more than words? Her reaction when he had embraced her after the abortive attempt at a birthday party was one of deep conflict: she craved physical comfort but feared and loathed the resulting necessary invasion of personal space. It would make it easy to be lonely even in a room full of people, despite the cheery personality she presented to the world. Most of the time.

Marshalling his thoughts, Mac decided he couldn't wait for her to come back. He jotted a quick note asking her to call him on a piece of paper from his notebook and left it on the couch. With one last look around, he left, closing the door quietly behind him.

He was startled to notice it was getting dark outside – the oppressive atmosphere of her apartment had skewed his sense of time. He checked in with the lab, pleased to hear Adam in the background when Stella picked up, apparently celebrating a breakthrough. On a whim, Mac asked Stella to trace Hannah's cell.

"Mac?"

"Something's not right Stel, and I'm going to find out what it is."

There was a pause and then Adam was on the line.

"Boss? You want me to track a cell?"

Mac read out Hannah's number from memory and tuned out Adam's muttering as he triangulated the signal, only fully paying attention again when he heard a beep on the line from the software in the lab.

"That's weird. Last known location is the same place Danny and Flack have gone – an abandoned warehouse in Jersey," said Adam. "Why would she go there?" he muttered to himself before continuing. "But her phone's off, has been for about six hours. She could be anywhere by now boss."

"Why are Danny and Flack on their way there?"

"We got a hit on the BOLO on the car, boss. Flack called Danny and they headed out not long ago." Adam gave him the address.

"I'm closer, tell them to hurry up and meet me there."

Mac hung up and shoved his phone in his pocket. Something definitely wasn't right.

The warehouse was another dead end. The car was there but appeared to have been the victim of a bleach bomb, removing all chance of DNA or fingerprints from the inside. Mac arranged to have it towed to the evidence garage in the hope that something on the outside might prove helpful. Combing the inside of the warehouse by torchlight, Danny literally stumbled over the remains of Clementine Hooper, hidden in a blue plastic sheet, thrown into a corner. There was no blood pool and no spatter so it appeared to be another body dump. He scoured the area looking for trace, blood, fibres, anything that would help link _someone_ to the dead girl in the tarp but came up empty. Nor was there any sign that Hannah had ever been there.

When Hannah didn't call or show for work the following day, Mac was initially disappointed. He had thought she knew better than that, she knew he was waiting to speak to her. But the odd location of her cell the day before tempered the disappointment with worry. Where was she? Why had she been at the warehouse? Her cell was still off, and now had about ten messages from him, first gently asking, then sternly ordering her to call him.

After three hours, Mac's patience ran out and he went back to her apartment. His note was still on the couch, although it looked like it might have been moved slightly. Everything else was the same. Starting to feel a little more concerned, Mac turned to leave, only to find a series of Polaroid pictures pinned to the back of the door. They had not been there the day before. They were all of Hannah, some days old, some weeks. The most recent was easy to spot. She was stood in front of a small blonde girl, protecting her from the knife that was just visible at the bottom of the picture. She was snarling at the camera, blood streaming down her face from a deep looking cut above her eye. The picture was date and time stamped as the day before, around 4pm. That meant that while Mac was looking round her apartment for the first time, Hannah had already been abducted and was fighting both for her own life and that of another young girl.

An hour later, the tiny flat was crowded with CSIs examining every inch of the place, looking for something that would hint at what had happened. Danny and Hawkes took the photographs back to the lab to try and work out a timeline and a pattern as it was clear Hannah had been followed for a while before being taken. Mac and Stella split the apartment between them while Flack; tight lipped and shaking with barely contained fury, led Lyndsey and a swarm of uniformed officers on a door to door canvass of the entire building hoping to piece together Hannah's last movements and find out if anyone else had seen anything suspicious. Adam set about trying to ID the third kidnapped child from the limited view available in the most recent image.

It occurred to Adam as he was hunting through the Missing Persons database that if Hannah had been right about Bowman, then perhaps he could use that as a starting point. Sliding his chair across to another computer, he opened the algorithm they had written together following her flash of insight that lead to catching the Ferry rapist. He set to work, muttering to himself as he adjusted parameters: location, target, dates, times. Bowman was in the wind, his apartment a front. So he had to be living somewhere. Where would a sadistic paedophile hang out? Money - did he work? Where? Even monsters need to eat so where did he do his grocery shopping? Did he have any specific tastes that would be easier to pinpoint?

Mac stopped in the doorway to listen to Adam work on his way back to his office. He smiled briefly, pleased with Adam's train of thought. Instead of looking for something hidden, look for what it's impossible to hide. Electric usage, internet bills, food shopping. The man had to be somewhere in the city, it was just a case of narrowing the search down enough.

Mac's thoughts stuttered to a halt. Hannah's cell phone had last made contact with a cell tower from the abandoned warehouse where Clementine Hooper was found. It hadn't been recovered, but they hadn't expected to find it. They had all assumed it was in her possession and turned off, wherever she was - but what if it wasn't? What if it was still at the warehouse? Mac grabbed his coat, striding down the corridor to the lift and out into the parking garage, dialling Flack on the way.

"Don? It's Mac. I think her cell is still at the warehouse dump site, I'm on my way, meet me there."

Mac arrived back at the warehouse in front of Flack, who pulled sharply up behind him, spraying dust and gravel everywhere. He leapt from his car almost before it had stopped moving and started shouting Hannah's name. It took Mac some minutes to calm the frantic detective, logically pointing out that if she had been there, they would have found her the previous evening. They split up, Flack taking the inside, Mac the outside.

It was on his third circuit of the building that Mac spotted what he thought was a patch of broken glass in a tyre impression in the general vicinity where the car had been dumped. Crouching down next to it, he poked the fragments with a pen before snapping on a pair of gloves and calling Flack to let him know he'd found something. The remains of Hannah's cell lay broken in the stony dirt. Thinking back to the previous night and imagining the scene as they had arrived, he realised the tracks were most likely from the Avalanche, given the size. He had probably run over her cell himself. He pulled an evidence bag from a pocket and retrieved as many pieces as possible, then scooped up the dirt it had been laying in and bagging that too for good measure.

On returning to the Avalanche, they found a fluttering photograph tucked under the wipers. It was of another young girl, another blonde, similar in age to the three already taken. She was bound naked to a chair, tape across her mouth, blood and bruises marring her entire body. Both eyes were swollen shut and her nose was thoroughly broken. Mac was fairly sure facial rec wouldn't work on the image: her features were just too distorted by the abuse. With a shaking hand he handed the photo to Flack who let out a stream of Gaelic curses before kicking a stone along the ground in frustration.

"How long were we out of sight of the truck Mac? You think the son-of-a-bitch is still nearby?"

Mac shook his head. "I think we were lured here by Hannah's cell deliberately. I've walked around the building several times, takes about fifteen minutes or so. He could have dropped it off almost an hour ago."

Flack groaned and thumped the roof of the Avalanche anger. He leant over the roof, resting his head on his arm for a moment, hiding his face from his friend.

"I never said…I never…at least Jess…I can't do this again…" Flack trailed off, unable to speak.

Mac bagged the picture and stripped his gloves off.

"The best thing we can do now is find him before he can hurt any of them anymore," said Mac, although his words were cold comfort. They both knew what this monster was capable of and someone they both cared about was under his control, as well as two more frightened young girls.

Adam stared at the photographs on the plasma screen, putting them in date and time stamp order, building up a time line of Hannah's movements outside the lab. She was a creature of habit it seemed: she went running, she ate very little, and slept even less if the dark smudges under her eyes were anything to go by. There were pictures of her on the subway, crossing streets, sitting on a bench in the Park, getting coffee. Nothing near the lab, almost as if he had been too wary to come too close. _Damn right too._ Adam sighed in frustration. He looked up as Mac returned, and wondered how he missed him leaving.

"Adam, leave the photos for a moment, I need you to see if you can get anything from this," said Mac, handing him an evidence bag.

"Sure thing boss. What's in here?" he asked, breaking the seal and tipping the contents on his desk.

"The remains of Hannah's cell," said Mac quietly, with pain in his voice. "I think it was me that ran it over yesterday."

"Oh…OK. I'll see what I can do."

Mac called the team together an hour later to go over what they had.

Lyndsey had turned up nothing from the door-to-door enquiries in Hannah's building. Adam had been able to confirm that her cell had travelled from her apartment to the abandoned warehouse but had turned up nothing on CCTV along the route, only confirming that she had not gone there of her own volition: she simply didn't know the city well enough to travel avoiding all the cameras.

"Dates, times and locations," Adam muttered, as a flash of insight struck him.

"What?" Mac stopped his train of speech.

"I'm stupid!" cried Adam, leaping from his seat. "Dates, times and locations!" he left the room at speed, making a beeline for his lab.

"What else do we have?" asked Mac, exasperated by Adam's sudden departure.

"All the prints in her apartment where her own, no signs of forced entry," said Stella.

"No hits on the BOLO," added Danny.

"Still trying to identify the drug, it's a homemade cocktail so tracing it is slow going," said Hawkes.

Mac frowned. "So we've got nothing."

There was a shout from the direction Adam had gone.

Mac's eyebrows raised. "Or maybe we have."

Aware that the rest of the team was wondering what on earth he had been talking about, Adam started to run a geolocation analysis of the images. By feeding the results into their algorithm he would be able to map the locations of the images and tie it in with the results of the same analysis on what little information they had on Bowman's movements, the kidnapping sites and body dump locations. A ping from his other terminal halted thought process, a Missing Person's hit identifying the third missing girl as Gina Williams. He let out a whoop of joy. Finally a lead! He spun on his chair in celebration, crashing to a halt on the second revolution as Mac and the team filed in, alerted by his yell.

Mac grabbed a print out of Adam's result and handed it to Danny.

"We have an ID on the girl. Danny, Lyndsey, take a uni and talk to Gina Williams' parents, see if you can work out a time line and back track her movements, see if you get a correlation with what Adam gets from his analysis. Hawkes, this guy is drugging them to keep them under control. Find out what he's cocktail he's using and see if you can track any unusual purchases or even thefts. Stella, keep working on tracking Bowman's movements before he came to New York, see if you can get an idea of who he is and when he arrived in the US, and if Bowman is even his real name. Adam, update Danny and Lyndsey when you've got something and keep working on ID'ing the fourth girl." He picked up a copy of the photo left on his windshield and put it in his pocket. "I'm going back to Hannah's apartment, we're missing something."

The drive to Hannah's apartment calmed Mac's racing thoughts, letting him think more clearly. There was a piece of the puzzle missing – why had he taken Hannah? The vaguely familiar uni on watch at her door let him pass without even looking at his badge. Mac quietly closed her front door behind him to stand alone and motionless in her living room for the third time in three days; carefully looking for something, anything, that seemed out of place.

"What happened Hannah?" he murmured, trying to piece together what they knew. His eyes unfocussed as he visualised the sequence of events as they knew them. A muffled thud interrupted his thoughts and he moved towards the noise. The soft movement of air behind him alerted him that he was not alone in the apartment as he had thought, so the first blow only dazed him as he spun round, only to see Les Bowman dressed as a uniformed officer grinning at him.

"Very clever detective. But not quite clever enough."

Mac was unable to dodge the second blow in his groggy state and collapsed across her couch unconscious.


	8. Chapter 8

_Running from the past felt I was gone with the wind. Life must be round, I ended up back here again. And in the dying cries of the pain that you feel, know that, when I'm thinking, I am thinking of you still. **Kim Churchill, Only Time Can Take You On.**_

He awoke to stifling heat and a pounding head. He could feel trickles of blood on his neck from both head wounds, and his hands were bound stretched out to each side. His stomach was churning and there was cold sweat on his skin despite the temperature. He could hear trains rattling past the building and boat horns in the distance. Somewhere near train tracks and water. He opened his eyes and his surroundings swam into blurry vision. Some sort of attic space barely lit by tiny skylight far above. He was zip tied to the supporting beams of the roof structure, his ankles to an upright and each hand to a crossbeam. In the corner was a small figure with blonde hair apparently unconscious – Gina Williams he assumed. Lifting his heavy, thumping head, he was startled to meet Hannah's green eyes. She was tied in a similar fashion to the wooden supporting beams of the roof opposite him but most of her clothing had been ripped or cut away. She was covered in blood and there was a small pool of it by her feet. Numerous wounds across her body oozed blood sluggishly and her face was ashen underneath the extensive bruising. One eye was nearly swollen shut as a result of the cut above her eye that had been in the photo, which was still in his pocket; unlike his gun, which was missing from its holster. She was embarrassed, he could see now what she had always covered with long sleeves and high necked tops. She was covered in scars, every part of her body that he could see was marked in some way. This was not her first taste of the depravity of a sadist.

Before he could get his bearings any further, the hatch to the attic was flung open and a ladder rattled down. Both Hannah and Gina flinched at the noise. Gina not unconscious, only playing possum. Seeing his glance towards the young girl, Hannah gave him a desperate look and shook her head. Mac suddenly understood, feeling a flush of pride in his lab tech: regardless of what had been done to her; both recently and before, Hannah was still protecting the girl, in the only way she was currently able – by making sure the abuse was aimed at herself, rather than the child. Bowman chambered into the cramped space holding a belt in one hand and grinned at him.

"So. Detective Mac Taylor. You're the one who's been poisoning her thoughts. Making her believe she was useful. Worth something. _Valued_ ," he sneered and paused before continuing in a jokey tone, "but this _is_ fun don't you think? Two for the price of one you might say. Hurting you, hurts her. I know that already. Does it work the other way round I wonder? Shall we find out?" Bowman loosed a snigger that was more of a maddened giggle.

Mac went cold as Bowman cut the zip ties holding Hannah up and let her fall to the floor. He swung the belt, lashing her back with the buckle end. Hannah bore the initial strokes silently but screamed when he hit her a third time. Mac felt a surge of _paternal?_ protectiveness wash over him like a wave, clearing his head and pushing his own pain to the side.

"Leave her alone, you bastard!" he shouted, starting to struggle fruitlessly against his bonds.

Bowman paused and tilted his head to one side, studying Mac's reaction.

"In-ter-esting." Bowman drew out the word as if it was indeed the most interesting thing he had ever seen. "Do you think yourself in love with her, detective? Pointless I'm afraid. She is a broken plaything, nothing more. Although I will admit it is nice to be able to finish what one starts, especially as I started this one long ago," he frowned at Mac's confusion. "She didn't tell you? Oh that _is_ disappointing." Bowman kicked Hannah in the side but she merely moaned and went limp. "See? Broken. Good job I have a spare. And you of course. Detective Mac Taylor. I've never broken a man before but I'm sure I am up to the challenge." Bowman stepped forward, and grabbed Mac's head in both hands, his rancid breath hot on Mac's face. "I'm looking forward to it," he said with a smile and slammed Mac's head backwards, hard into the beam.

The next time Mac awoke he was being cut down from his beam. He was vaguely aware that Hannah tried to catch him but given their difference in size, all she could manage in her weakened state was provide a softer landing for him. He could feel warm blood from her wounds soaking into his shirt but was unable to move himself from where they had landed. He drifted off again and came to on his back, on the floor. His stomach was churning and but the unbearable heat of the attic was reduced. Presumably the sun had set but the skylight above them was so filthy it was hard to tell. A gentle hand clumsily dabbed his face with a damp cloth, wiping off some of the blood. Smaller hands cradled his neck and held a bunch of material to the wound on the back of his head as a bottle of water was brought to his lips. He took careful sips, aware his stomach was rebelling even that much, and forced his eyes open. There was a fuzzy indistinct shape in front of him. Blinking furiously to try and focus, Hannah's worried face emerged from the blur. She smiled in relief at him and winced as the action reopened a barely scabbed cut in her face.

"Hi boss. Glad you could join us."

"Wha' 'appen'?" he slurred, trying to remember. But it was like pushing gravy uphill, he couldn't organise his thoughts and the world was spinning around him.

"We think he works nights somewhere. We get tied to the floor beams when it's cooler and he leaves us alone for hours. He ran out of zip ties this evening after securing you and used rope for us girls. Gina," Hannah paused to run her hand affectionately over the young girl's hair, "has small hands and managed to get the knots started so I could undo them." She gave him a little more water. "The water's drugged but it's better than nothing."

Mac could feel the drug working already, numbing him, working in his favour because it was taking some of the pain away.

"Cold," he managed.

Hannah grinned mirthlessly. "Yeah, sorry, not much we can do about that. Your jacket is stopping you bleeding to death, and as you can see, I seem to be all out of wardrobe options."

He tried to sit up but Hannah gently held him down.

"Stay down boss. You're badly concussed." She looked him over carefully, as if judging how badly he was hurt. Mac took the opportunity to do the same to her and was horrified at the extent of her injuries.

"You..."

"Doesn't matter," she dismissed his concern with a gentle shake of her head. "I've had worse."

Remembering what Bowman had been saying, the missing piece of the puzzle finally dropped in. The picture from his windshield was of Hannah, many years ago. Hannah was unfinished business for him. She had been held by him before and obviously escaped somehow, but was it chance or design that her personal tormentor had turned up in New York? Bowman had said she was unfinished business…he obviously meant to kill her and had probably planned to all along.

Mac watched in confusion as Hannah first told Gina to take off her shirt and then sat the small girl in front of her. Gina clutched her shirt to her chest as if to hide herself from his gaze. He made his eyes focus on the wall, unwilling to intrude upon the small girl's limited privacy.

It wasn't clear what Hannah was doing until Gina stood up, holding Mac's right shoe in her hand. They had evidently had time to come up with an impromptu plan while he was unconscious because written on Gina's back in Hannah's own blood was a series of observations about their location and signed at the bottom "HR". Hannah crept over to him, wiped her fingers across his still bleeding head and added "MT" underneath. Gina put her shirt back on and then, sobbing with pain, Hannah lifted Gina onto her shoulders. Her blood pattered down into Mac's pants, her many wounds starting to bleed again as she hoisted Gina above her head with a scream of effort. Gina was able to grab a roof beam above her head and haul herself up.

"Count your footsteps. Find the first shop and get them to call 911. Detective Don Flack. Remember Gina. Talk to Don Flack. He will understand. Tell him everything. No one else," gasped Hannah, sagging to the floor. She couldn't see Gina's nod but Mac did.

Hannah leaned over him as they heard the filthy skylight break high above them and shards of glass rained down. As she turned her body to protect his upturned face from the hail of glass, Mac was treated to a close up view of her torso, marked with scars. The largest appeared to be a word, as if someone had carved it into her skin with a blade.

As the dust settled, Hannah made him drink a little more, then ripped two lengths off Mac's shirt, wrapping them around her hands like a boxer. Using her partially protected hands, she swept the broken glass away from where he lay. She ripped another strip from his shirt and wrapped it around the end of a larger shard and crouched behind him, using her makeshift blade to start to saw through his zip ties. High on the drug cocktail in the water, Mac grinned. Hell of a bad wardrobe day. His jacket was ruined, his shirt was being used as a multipurpose tool and a nine year old girl had climbed out the window with one of his shoes. Hannah laughed from behind him where she worked on the zip ties, and Mac realised he had voiced his thought aloud.

Once his hands were free, he caught hers and pulled her down to him into a clumsy embrace. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder as best he could and they stayed like that for hours, each taking comfort in the other, eventually succumbing to exhaustion and sleep.

She didn't sleep for long before she started to dream. Twitching and whimpering, she woke Mac from his thin doze.

"Stop it…please…it hurts…no more…please…" Caught in her nightmare, Hannah begged her assailant to stop.

Then she uttered the three words Mac had been both expecting and fearing since seeing Hannah and Bowman in the same room.

"Please…Daddy, stop."

Mac pulled her gently closer to him, resting her head against his chest as he had done before. His impromptu solution worked and she calmed slowly, apparently taking comfort in his heartbeat. Her arms crept around his body and she shivered, suffering from loss of blood. Mac could feel it on his skin and the remains of his shirt was becoming tacky with it, but simply held her tighter. The weight of her head became heavier as she relaxed and she fell asleep draped across him. Marvelling at how one so hurt could still be so trusting, he followed her into sleep.

Stella stared at her cell in concern. Mac's phone was never switched off. Mostly because he rarely slept so would always answer, day or night. It was late but he had always answered before. She frowned. Adam had found a correlation with the info they had regarding the movements of Hannah and three of the missing girls; the addition of data gathered by Danny and Lyndsey from Gina's parents had revealed a pattern they could start to track. Prints lifted from the trunk release on the car found at the warehouse matched those in the abandoned apartment, confirming Les Bowman as the kidnapper, and she had confirmed Bowman as his real name, originally from England. Hawkes had a promising lead on a batch of stolen pharmaceuticals and was trying to recreate the blend with Sid's help, but Mac was nowhere to be found and not answering his cell. _Now what?_

She jumped as it rang in her hand.

"Mac?"

"Ah, no. Do I sound like Mac?" asked Flack.

"Don. No, it's just, we can't reach him."

"Well, I've just had a strange call from a precinct uptown – Gina Williams just walked in and apparently demanded to speak to me, I'm on my way there now. She refuses to talk to anyone else."

Stella took the address and grabbed her coat.

"Danny? Take Lyndsey and head over to Hannah's apartment. That's where Mac went last. See if you can work out where he went from there. I'm meeting Flack, Gina Williams turned up."

"On it!"

With people scattering to find answers, Stella allowed herself a moment's panic for Mac's sake before running for the parking garage as fast as her heels would take her.

Gina proved cooperative once she had examined Flack's badge in detail. She stripped off her shirt and turned around, allowing them to see what Hannah had so painstakingly written for them.

 **"** **attic. At least 3** **rd** **flr**

 **broken skylight**

 **trains +++**

 **boat? horns**

 **sewage/sulphur**

 **HR + MT"**

Flack swallowed thickly. It was a detailed description of where the girl had been kept, and it was written in blood on her back. Definitely a first. The young girl was mostly unharmed, only minor bruising and she was scared out of her wits but none of the blood used to write on her back had been her own. Despite his eagerness to try and get her to tell him where Hannah was, Gina refused point blank to say anything with Stella still in the room. When he insisted, the small girl consented to let Stella collect evidence but would not speak.

Stella took pictures, samples of the blood for DNA, scraped the girl's fingernails for trace and sped back to the lab with her shirt, leaving Flack to talk to the girl, now swamped in one of his LAPD hoodies, by himself.

Adam looked in dismay at the results from the DNA profiling on the blood from Gina's back. Most of it had been Hannah's but some had also been Mac's.

Danny and Lyndsey returned from Hannah's apartment with news that the uni on her door had been beaten unconscious, stripped and left tied up in the bathroom. There was a minor blood stain on the sofa and Mac's smashed cell had been left on the coffee table. It seemed clear that for whatever reason, Bowman had not stopped at taking Hannah, but had also set a trap and taken their boss.

Flack called in with the jumbled details Gina had been able to remember about her journey from where she had been held and they set to work narrowing their search using the information she had been able to give them and the details Hannah had so cleverly provided.

Flack called again half an hour later with another remembered detail.

"Mac's shoe is hanging from the TV aerial. I kid you not. Once she had calmed down a bit more, she remembered. I've got canine and air support on standby, give me a neighbourhood and we're there." He paused. "I just hope he resists," he added menacingly.

Mac and Hannah were woken by mocking laughter.

"So you _are_ in love. Isn't that precious? The big-shot detective and his broken lab rat. How _sweet_!" said Bowman, obviously enjoying himself. The temperature in the attic was starting to rise again and Mac's head thudded sickly with every beat of his heart. The crippling nausea had abated slightly, leaving him a little more aware of his situation. Sleeping had been dangerous; with a concussion he ran the risk of a coma if he fell asleep again but after drinking the drugged water, he hadn't been able to help himself. He watched Bowman as he scanned the attic space and add up the increased light levels, broken glass and missing girl, but was unable to stop him ripping Hannah from his arms and hauling her up by the hair.

"You BITCH!" he screamed into her face, shaking her roughly. "You've ruined everything. AGAIN!" He backhanded her hard across the face and let her fall to the floor, completely stunned by the blow. Mac could hear distant sirens and could only hope they were coming their way as it was clear Bowman had run out of patience. Bowman had heard them too and drew a long bladed knife.

"Sorry to cut short our time together Detective, but I think it's time I left," he said crouching down next to him. He raised the knife and paused. "I think killing you will finally break her," he said with a smile. "Such a pity I won't be able to see it. But I'm sure I will find her again." He grinned and plunged the knife downwards.

Mac rolled clumsily to the side barely in time and felt the blade open a line of fire across his shoulder. His queasy stomach protested the sudden movement and he heaved, the effort making his vision grey at the edges and the accompanying sudden jolt of pain in his skull leaving him unable to move. The knife had apparently embedded itself in the floorboards, such was the strength behind the thrust and Mac could hear Bowman struggling to free it. Cursing, he abandoned the knife and drew Mac's own gun from his waistband, levelling the barrel at Mac's head. Before he could do more than take aim, Hannah tripped him, toppling him to the floor. As Mac fought unconsciousness he could hear them struggling for the weapon. The last thing he saw as his eyes slipped closed was Hannah, standing in front of him, between him and the gun.

"Move."

"No! I won't let you touch him again!"

"He doesn't love you, slut! Who could?"

Mac heard the shot and an inarticulate scream of pain as something whined past his ear and buried itself in the floorboards near his head, spraying him with splinters. He could still hear them, although the noises sounded like they were coming from far away. Or underwater. A body thumped to the floor near him and then there was a moment of silence, broken by a masculine grunt of pain. There was another shot, and then Hannah's voice, cold and vicious.

"You don't own me any more."

There was a third shot before a crash of someone falling down the ladder leading from the attic. He listened to a helicopter getting closer and realised he had been drifting in and out of soupy consciousness. His eyelids were weighted with cement blocks and were too heavy to open, but he was aware of Hannah pressing firmly on his shoulder presumably with another length of his ruined shirt to try and stop the bleeding. He was tired and cold, despite the heat of the attic. He listened to her ramble as he lay there, unable to move or respond.

"Please don't die boss, please don't die. I need you, please don't die. Please. I love you Mac, please don't leave me. I can't do it without you…"

She had called him Mac. He smiled inside; it had taken her nearly two years and a shared trauma before she could call him his given name to his face. Even if she thought he wasn't listening. The pressure on his shoulder was fading now, her slurred words slowing and reduced to muttered pleas.

"Please Mac…please…don't leave me…I can't…please…pl…"

She slumped sideways, away from him, and was still. Mac tried to turn and open his eyes to see if she was still alive but the darkness claimed him.


	9. Chapter 9

Pain.

Heat, then cold.

Vibration. A sharp sting in his arm.

More cold quickly followed by stifling heat. He moaned, and tried to struggle, thinking he was still in the attic. Voices, followed by a smell. Antiseptic. Not the attic. He relaxed then, allowing himself to float away as hands reached for him, making him weightless. Images flashed through his mind. Hannah crying in his arms in the break room. Hannah defending him. Hannah trying to stop him bleeding but taking no care for her own wounds. Her scars, and the word carved in her side. Her fear when Bowman threatened to shoot him with his own weapon. Her face relaxed in sleep as he held her.

The pain ebbed and flowed like a tide. At low tide, where there was pain, there were also voices. He could recognise speech cadence but not the words. High tide was a blissful numbness. He let himself be carried by the currents, drifting away from the pain.

The voices were clearer now; when he could hear them, he could pick out enough words to get the gist of what was being said. He recognised the voices of his friends: Flack, distraught and apologising for something; Danny and Lyndsey with Lucy; Hawkes, worried about him, but more for someone else; Stella talking about the case and how they had found them. Something about his shoes? And then, _her_ voice. _She's alive. Thank God._

She leant over him and whispered in his ear. He could hear her clearly, her words slow and broken with pain.

"I'm so sorry boss. This is all my fault. I should have told you about him, I'm sorry. I should have known when I left Phoenix he wouldn't give up. I hope you can hear me, I need you to fight. Your team needs you." She stroked his hair. "I love you. I love you like the dad I wish I could have had. Goodbye Mac, thank you for trying to save me."

She kissed his forehead, her tears raining down on his face as she did so.

Mac gathered his strength and started to battle his way upwards, towards the pain, alarmed by her words.

Adam repeated her plea for him to wake up when he visited _hours?_ _days? minutes?_ later. He sounded choked as if he was holding back tears.

"Boss, we need you, please wake up. You've been here a week." Adam paused. "Hannah needs you. I mean, I thought...my dad was bad…"

Mac struggled to listen, realising Adam was finally sharing something of his past.

"He never understood how he ended up with a science geek for a son. Boys should be tall, strong, play football and have beautiful girls hanging on their every word. Everything I'm not in other words. I'm an awkward nerd lacking in social skills with no idea how to talk to women. He would beat me and call me names to try and 'toughen me up'. I had more bones broken than any of my friends who played football. I graduated school and left home, I've not spoken to him since. I relive what he did to me _everyday_ and some days it's hard to keep going, but Hannah…" Adam sniffed. "She's so…strong. I don't know how she does it. She's still suffering Mac. She got shot with your gun when Bowman aimed for you and nearly bled out because she was trying to stop _you_ bleeding. She can't sleep for nightmares and they keep having to sedate her, and she won't see any of us when she's awake. Flack is a real mess, when she refused to see him, he started shouting and running up and down the corridor trying to find her room. The doctors sedated him and made Danny take him home. " Adam paused and continued, so quietly that Mac struggled to hear what he was saying.

"Bowman…the things we found in that house. Pictures. Videos. _Souvenirs._ She wasn't his first victim, or his last, but he came to the US looking for her, boss; she was the target all the time. She was his daughter. When she escaped from him, she fled England and changed her name and I just can't...I don't get it. As bad as I had it, she…how can someone…how does she keep going?" Adam sniffed deeply. "She went missing from her bed yesterday. Everyone thought she'd be here, with you, but she wasn't. And straightway, I just knew. I mean, I was there once. Just wanting to give up on it all, make it all go away. I was the one who found her on the roof, just staring blankly into the distance. She looked so disappointed that I'd found her. She idolises you, boss. If you asked her to stand in front of a bus, she'd do it; probably only stopping to ask you if it mattered which one. Hannah thinks it's her fault you're here, her fault that you got hurt and that's killing her; it hurts more than anything he was ever able to do to her." Adam cleared his throat. "Please wake up Mac." He sat in silence for a while, gathering himself back together.

"I've gotta go boss," he said sounding more like himself. "Crimes are still being committed while you're in here. Keep fighting."

Mac drifted, awareness rising and falling.

The machine's steady beeping was getting on his nerves. As he fought his way to the surface, other noises filtered in, clearer than ever. There was a baby crying somewhere. A trolley with a squeaky wheel passed by. He heard a door open and close quietly and a rustle of fabric. A chair slowly moved across the floor, apparently with great effort. A sigh as someone sank into the chair, now closer to his bed. He knew where he was now, his thoughts still sluggish but moving faster. A hand crept onto the bed and gently entwined fingers with his. A watery sniff and an almost completely muffled sob. Nobody should have to learn to cry in silence. He thought he knew who it was now. She started to speak, confirming his guess regarding the identity of his visitor, and he steeled himself to stay lucid long enough to listen to what, if anything, she needed to tell him.

"You kept asking me, 'what happened?' And I wanted to tell you. Honestly, I did. Every time you asked me. But I just couldn't. Not telling, not trusting, was beaten into me at such a young age and it was just too…raw, even after so long. But you deserve to know even if you never want to see me again, because it's my fault you're here." She paused, apparently unsure how to continue.

She told him the stories behind some of some of the scars and some notable events that shaped her, such as a brief period of alcohol abuse as a teenager to numb the pain she felt. Her sentences became shorter, staccato almost, as she talked about her childhood and the pain and fear of growing up with a monster in her life. It was painful to hear but more painful to say. Eventually she stuttered to a halt.

There was a long pause, during which Mac realised he was tiring rapidly. He fought to stay with her, she needed this. This was what he had be hoping for her, to be able to talk about what haunted her. He had offered to listen, and he would do so. Every word. No matter the cost to himself.

"I killed him. Bowman I mean. I shot him with your gun and he fell through the loft access. He broke me once before but I managed to escape. My mother wasn't so lucky."

She laid her head on his arm and shook with sobs that overtook her body, leaving her gasping for breath and in real danger of bursting stitches in the many wounds she had suffered.

"Please wake up Mac," between sobs, her words now muffled by the sheets. "Please wake up, don't leave me. I feel so...so _empty_ and alone. Adam caught me trying to do something…something…stupid, but I couldn't do it, I couldn't bear thinking that I'd disappointed you by giving up." She paused then continued, now sounding angry. "But now everyone _knows_. Everyone knows what happened to me, I kept it secret for so long and now I'm so ashamed...I can't bear to see the _pity_ in their eyes. Poor little Hannah, another _victim_." She spat the last word viciously. "Caught by that monster not once, but twice. How stupid can you get? How can I ever get my life back now?"

She drew in a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I sound selfish, moaning about how bad I've got it when you're stuck here, trapped in your own head and unable to wake up. I've spent an hour talking to you, and you won't remember a thing I've said. I'll be OK." She managed a bitter sounding snort of laughter. "I don't have a choice. I never did."

There was another rustle and her head left his arm. A moment later the door opened and closed again quietly.

Having exhausted himself, Mac sank back down, the shore of consciousness receding.

The next time he was aware of his surroundings, he could discern light and dark. He struck out for the surface and with a supreme effort, he was able to open his eyes. Light stabbed at his pupils, making his eyes water furiously before they slowly adjusted. Stella sat at his bedside, her hand loosely holding his, fast asleep in the hard looking chair next to his bed. He watched her for a moment before squeezing her hand. She was awake instantly, her gaze finding his face and breaking into a huge relieved smile that made the happy tears standing in her eyes run down her cheeks.

"Hey! Welcome back."

Mac tried to speak but was only capable of a rough croak. Stella squeezed his hand and dashed off to find a nurse.

By the time a nurse had found him a drink and he had been poked and prodded by a series of relieved looking doctors, Mac's room was full of people. There was a notable exception, much to his concern. When he mentioned Hannah, there was a series of significant looks exchanged amongst his team but no one would give him a straight answer.

Five days later and ready to be discharged; much to his doctor's apparent annoyance, Mac made his way slowly down a corridor two floors from his own room. This was where the patients on suicide watch were kept, in full view of a selection of cameras and checked on regularly in order to prevent any mishaps. It felt wrong that she would be here, but after disappearing from her bed a second time, the medical staff had felt they had no choice. Even when Mac had woken up and told them where she had been: with him. As someone who valued her privacy above almost everything else, to be watched constantly must be torture after what she had been through.

He sat by her bed, just watching her and thinking. Flack had been there recently, his cologne fading rapidly in the processed, recycled air. She was sleeping, but not peacefully; her face was twisted in anguish, trapped in her nightmares by the sedatives. Her arms were bandaged heavily and he could see a large dressing over she shoulder covering what he knew to be a bullet wound from his own weapon. Looking down at the tortured young woman in the bed, Mac made a decision. He understood now, but understanding wasn't enough. She needed his help; she had always needed his help but he had always waited for her to ask. He knew now that she would not, could not, ask: it was not in her nature now, if it ever had been. The abused girl had had grown up into a self-reliant young woman, unwilling to share her hidden inner self for fear of further pain, unable to reach out like she so desperately wanted to, afraid of rejection. She had told him of the horrors in her past because he was unconscious, not there; she didn't expect him to hear or remember. She had saved his life in that attic, with no thought of her own. And now he would save hers.

He took her hand gently and wrapped it around something he drew from his pocket, wincing as the still tender muscles in his shoulder protested at the movement. A knock on the doorframe interrupted his study of her healing injuries and he turned to see Danny standing in the doorway with a wheelchair.

"Condition of your release boss," he said with a smile. "Hop in."

Mac nodded and tucked the note he had written into her loosely clenched fist. With one final troubled look, he left.

Sat in his apartment, still not recovered enough to return to work; it was two days of paperwork, watching his neighbours and boredom before Flack called him to say Hannah had discharged herself from hospital against doctors recommendations. She had not been seen since and Flack sounded a little desperate, as if worried she would repeat her attempt at harming herself.

Mac didn't think that was likely, he was more concerned that she would go to her own place, alone. He hoped she would read the note he had left, her apartment was sterile and lonely, no place to recuperate after her ordeal. He had told her not to go back there and given her his address. He waited.

By the time the sun was starting to set, he was worried as well, sure she had gone back to her apartment to try and battle her demons alone. Darkness fell and Mac had almost given up hope. He picked up his cell to call the lab and get them to look for her but a noise in the hallway stopped him. Not daring to move, he listened. It was her. It had to be, no one else would shuffle back and forth in front of his door as if making an agonising decision. The footsteps started to recede and he bolted for the door, throwing his phone onto the table by the couch as he passed.

She froze when she heard to door open behind her, not realising the apartment Mac had directed her to wasn't empty. She had walked the streets for hours in a daze trying to work out whether she was going to take him up on the offer of a place to sleep rather than run, like she had last time. And the time before. Her brief thoughts of suicide while in the hospital had been just that: brief. She couldn't bear the thought of letting him down in that way. In the end, she had done as he had asked. Because it was _him_ who had asked. If it had been anyone else, even Don, she would have been on the first flight out of the city and wouldn't have looked back. But having got there and paced in front of the door, she couldn't bring herself to open it. Despite everything: all that he knew and all he had seen, she was still too afraid to ask for help. To risk being hurt again. To risk finding out that he couldn't see their relationship the way she did. She turned to see him standing in the doorway, waiting for her.

He stood patiently, waiting for her decision. She made the first move, a small hesitant step towards him, and then another. Mac closed the distance between them and carefully drew his good arm around her shoulders, searching her face for signs of distress. She let him led her into the apartment and settle her on the couch.

Hannah examined her surroundings with the beginnings of a spark of interest. This was no safe house. Pictures of Mac, of a pretty woman that must be his wife Claire who died on 9/11, of his time in the marines and his friends adorned the walls. She could smell his aftershave permeating the room, setting her slowly at ease. This was his apartment.

Mac watched her relax minutely and carefully sat down next to her. He leaned back against the corner cushions in a calculated move to be less threatening: less "boss" and more "friend".

"I didn't think you were coming."

She shrugged. "I almost didn't."

"What changed your mind?"

The intense gaze she turned on him surprised him until he thought about it a little more. She had come because he had asked her. The depth of her devotion to him included taking a bullet meant for him and still trying to save his life while her lifeblood drained away. It had been hard for her to accept his offer of help, that much was painfully obvious, but she had accepted. Because _he_ had asked her. For a moment Mac couldn't breathe, finally understanding what it was she wanted, _needed_ from him.

"Did you mean it?" he asked finally, when it was clear she wasn't going to say anything.

Her gaze turned puzzled, not understanding.

"What you said in the hospital, about how you felt. You thought I couldn't hear you." He smiled. "Both times," he added, "but I mean the first time specifically."

He knew when the penny dropped, when she realised what he was asking; she turned her face away, blush rising on her face and shoulders tensing. Hope and fear radiated from her, sitting stiffly on the edge of his couch.

"Hannah?"

"...s," she muttered, too low for him to hear.

"Hannah?"

Unable to speak, Hannah simply nodded, still facing away from him.

Mac wrapped one arm around her and pulled her towards him, drawing her head down to his chest as he had done before. She stiffened initially but he held on, not willing to let go having got this far. He drew his other arm across her body, holding her to him. She shuddered in his arms, holding a breath and releasing it shakily. And again.

"You're going to be OK Hannah. You are so strong. We'll get through it. Together. I will not leave you."

Then she was crying, sobbing silently as tears streamed from her eyes, soaking his shirt again as she had done all that time ago in the break room.

He held her until her tears had run their course, and realised she had fallen into a peaceful sleep, her head resting over his heart. Reaching carefully, he snagged his cell from the table and dialled Flack.

"Don. It's me," he whispered.

"Mac! Where is she? Is she OK? Can I see her? I've got to tell her…" there was a yelp, a thud and a clatter as he dropped his cell, followed by muffled curse and another clatter. Then Don was back. "Ow. Why are you whispering?"

Smiling to himself, Mac could picture the scene. Desperate to be near his friend, in his haste Flack had probably tried to stand up and put his shoes on with one hand while still holding the phone, and had slipped on the wooden floor of his apartment.

"I'm whispering because she's asleep. She's fine. At least, she will be. In time. You can come over to my place in the morning and see for yourself. I was going to put her up in the spare room but I don't think we're leaving the sofa tonight."

There was a relieved sigh that hitched in the middle as Flack struggled to contain his emotions but he managed to thank Mac for letting him know before breaking the connection quickly.

Mac brushed her untidy hair gently away from her face with his hand, watching her sleep. He would stand with her against the world, protect her from it, heal her and teach her. This lost young woman had pledged him as her substitute father, placed her love and trust in him. He would honour that gift. Some of the old pain he felt from never having the opportunity to have children with Claire was eased by his acceptance of her into his heart. They would heal each other and be stronger together. She murmured in her sleep and he wondered if even this small bit of peace she had achieved would be disturbed by nightmares, but she simply curled up more fully against him: bringing her feet up on to the cushions, snuggling into his body warmth and draping an arm over his chest. She would rest easy tonight.

Feeling more at peace than he had been since before 9/11, Mac closed his eyes and leaned back on the cushions, joining Hannah in deep, dreamless sleep.

She smiled in her sleep, his heartbeat echoing through her dreams, a constant drumbeat of safety and love that protected her from whatever the night may try to throw at her. And the wound she had never acknowledged, never spoken of; her agony over the corruption of the bond between father and daughter, began to heal.

 _Safe._

 ** _Finally._**

 _There is a sequel in progress..._


End file.
